Built. Trusted. Chosen.

The Exit-Ready Blueprint for Trades & Construction | Anita Marshall

• Wes Towers

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0:00 | 38:07

If you run a trades or construction business, it’s easy to wake up one day and realise the business cannot run, or sell, without you.

In this conversation, I’m joined by Anita Marshall from Gold Coast Business Brokers, and we unpack what actually makes a trades business attractive to buyers (and more resilient for you as the owner). Even if you never plan to sell, building with an exit in mind forces better foundations: cleaner financials, clearer systems, and a database you can actually hand over.

You’ll take away:

  • Why building an exit-ready business gives you options, even if you hand it to family
  • How cash jobs (“cashies”) can hurt valuation when revenue cannot be proven over 3–4 years
  • Simple systems you can document now (quoting, lead sources, workflows) to make handover easier
  • Why every enquiry belongs in a database, even the ones who did not proceed
  • How referral partner lists (agents, strata, etc.) become a real sale asset with a warm handover
  • Why less owner dependence typically leads to a higher multiple and a smoother sale

 Anita Marshall is a business broker with Gold Coast Business Brokers, helping owners prepare, position, and sell businesses with confidentiality and a clear process. She works with business owners across Queensland and supports the kind of practical “get it ready before you need it” approach we discuss in this episode.
Guest links:

 I’m Wes Towers, founder of Uplift 360. I help trades and construction companies be built, trusted, and chosen online through high-performing websites and Search Everywhere Optimisation. https://uplift360.com.au/

Want to be a guest on Built. Trusted. Chosen.? Book here: https://uplift360.com.au/built-trusted-chosen-podcast-guest-booking/

SPEAKER_01

Welcome to Build, Trusted, Chosen, the podcast for leaders and marketers in trades and construction. Hosted by Wiz Towers from Uplift 360.

SPEAKER_00

G'day, Anita. It's fantastic to have you on the podcast today. You were referred on, and I'm uh heard lots of good things about you serving uh various industries, but um uh businesses in the trades and construction you're you're really familiar with. But I'll get you just to introduce yourself really quickly. We'll unpack it as we go, of course, but tell us all about what you're up to.

SPEAKER_02

Fantastic. So, yes, my name's Anita Marshall from Gold Coast Business Brokers. And yeah, so we sell successful businesses. And thank you so much for having me along today. I'm really excited to have a chat and appreciate the opportunity.

SPEAKER_00

Yeah, so br previously we we uh discussed some um some key uh things about trades businesses, construction businesses, about getting them, having the having the mindset of getting ready for sale, even if you don't intend on selling right away or in fact uh never selling, if it's something you want to pass as a legacy to your kids or whatever it is, um that uh perspective of always building with the view of one day potentially being able to sell. Do you want to speak to that?

SPEAKER_02

Yes, absolutely. So look, I think a lot of tradies just run their business however they want to run them. They have not got in mind any type of exit at all. And you know, my father was a builder and he most certainly didn't sell his business when he retired, he just retired. And, you know, the thing is that your business is an asset. And if you can make that more valuable as you're building the business or as you're working in the business, so that one day you've got that asset to sell and exit with some money for all your hard-earned, you know, hours that you put into it, it's far better than just closing it down or passing it on to a family member if you can still if you want to. But at least it gives you options because sometimes family members are not interested in in taking on a business. So it's good to have that option.

SPEAKER_00

Yeah, and you're building in the in the right foundations for for no matter what, however you want to exit, because all of us need to exit at some stage. We're not gonna live forever, we're not going to be capable of doing the work that we've got. That's right.

SPEAKER_02

And the worst, that's right, the worst thing you can do is think six months before you've decided to sell, my gosh, what have I got to do to get this business ready for sale? Because you want to make your business more attractive than the same type of business next door that's trying to sell. And if you're trying to do that in a really fast amount of time, it's going to be a nightmare and a headache. So if you want to get the best price possible, you should be thinking about all these little things that you can be doing as you're going along.

SPEAKER_00

Yeah, 100%. And so, what are some of the the key uh problems that cause a business not to be able to be sold? What do do people um forget to build into their business and their structures?

SPEAKER_02

Yeah, so look, number one thing is you have to get your business to a profitable level. So sometimes tradies will be tempted to say, you know, I'll give you a cheaper price for cash. Well, if you're thinking about selling your business one day, that's not a good idea. So, you know, ideally a business buyer will want to see three, maybe four years of solid financials and they want to be able to see what income and revenue the business has had. If you're looking at selling in one year and you've taken a whole leap of cash throughout your trading years, and we can't prove that revenue is consistent, it does make it really hard to sell. So, you know, my first piece of advice is although cash might be tempting for a business owner, leave it and put it, put it through the business so that you've got a really nice, profitable business, and you also know exactly what um you know what income you've got coming in properly, not you know, if you're taking cash here and there, it is very tricky. Uh the other thing that yeah, the other thing that I would be doing is you know, starting to set up some systems and processes so that you can hand over easily to another person. So if someone was to walk into your business today and you knew that you only had one month to train them in your business, if you've got absolutely no, you know, systems, processes, templates for anything, workflows, it's very hard to teach someone in a short space of time. And if you're going to sell your business, you don't want to be stuck there for a year trying to help someone work out how they can do your business. So, you know, some sort of, and even if it's just a word-based procedure manual, you know, get some systems written down on how you do your quoting, where you get your leads from, and those type of things. Another really big tip is every single time you get an inquiry, be entering them into a database. So you don't be just, oh mate, no, I can't help you, we're booked out, or uh, you know, they decided not to go ahead for whatever reason. Make sure you're entering every single person into that database because they will then be a source of potential leads for a buyer. So if we've got, say, two plumbing businesses for sale, and one plumbing business has put into a CRM or even into a Google database, every single person that's inquired and the other plumbing business hasn't, but they've got the same number of, you know, repeat clients, you're more likely to sell that business that's got that larger database because they've got lots of potential leads that they could get one of their admin staff onto to contact them saying, you know, is there anything we can help you with? You've got a lot bigger database to market to.

SPEAKER_00

Yeah, 100%. And the database can be so helpful for a potential purchaser. They might have intentions to expand the business into new areas. Maybe they're a Sparky, so for the international guest, the Sparky is an electrician here in Australia, and uh maybe they're bringing in uh they're buying a plumbing business, and there's that uh potential to leverage uh a database in so many ways. But there's so many um potential problems uh when we're building a business that relies on us as the founder. And I it's how we usually start. We need to start where we're at. Um but I I had a guest on not so long ago now, and um he was h hospitalized significantly. Um uh he I think he nearly died. Um, and so the business was all run around him. He had a team, um, but his wife had to try pick up the pieces. He was not in any capacity to um run the business at all. He was in the hospital for quite some time. And so even just basic things that seem basic, but to know who you to pay the invoices and and who's and and salaries and and all of this stuff, because it was all in in his head, he was super stuck. I mean, that's a that's an extreme scenario. But I mean, as a trader, you might do your back, um, and then all of a sudden you can't be um on the tools so much for it for a while. So building these systems into your business so other people can do the work, so powerful, even if you don't intend to sell, the same philosophies are so valuable throughout your business and your journey. I just think uh just safeguarding um safeguarding what you what you're doing is so so important. So what what do you think um with the the selling of the business? Oh, the other thing too I wanted to mention. So you you said about uh people doing the cash jobs, the cashies uh for again international. I don't know if uh that's what they call them uh overseas, but here in Australia uh tradey trades are pretty tradies uh are pretty keen to to do a cash job where they can, which I completely understand. But I was talking to another guy just at the at the pub having a drink, he's a he's in the trades, and um he couldn't get finance, couldn't get a loan for his uh home because his his books are not legitimate, you know, he's not reporting true input.

SPEAKER_02

Yeah, well that's another tricky part of it, isn't it? Yes.

SPEAKER_01

No, the thing is that if you get yourself Yeah, that's right.

SPEAKER_02

And if you've got yourself a great accountant, I mean there's lots of expenses that you can be running through your business that is going to bring down your net profit that we can add back as business brokers. So depreciation is one really good example. Uh if you you know have depreciation depreciation written into your expenses, we can add that back to your bottom line. Your profit looks better when we do that, but you haven't paid tax on that. So you you know, I think it's really important to always use a good accountant, but you know, that that cash is a big problem for tradies, and we see that over and over. And you know, it's very hard to sell a secret. So if you've got cash and we can't prove it to someone, it's uh it is trickier. So you're going to get less for your business because that isn't able to be proven as revenue. Um, you know, back onto your story about the the guy that became unwell. Well, I just had a phone call yesterday from a gentleman that's very sick, he's hurt his back, and he has to sell urgently, and he is the only person in that business. So, you know, he he doesn't have an option of handing that over to someone, he needs to sell it. Um, you know, ideally, that you don't want to be putting yourself into that position. And many years ago, I did a really fantastic Tony Robbins course in Sydney when I was a business owner myself, and you know, his advice was to everyone in the room, and this included tradies, all types of businesses, you really ideally want to get yourself to a point where there's two people in the business that can do every single role. And I took that on board because you don't know when something might come up, and something is always going to come up sooner or later. So, you know, you want to be prepared for that. But the other reason is that, you know, sometimes a staff member is incredibly invaluable when it's coming to a sale as well, because you know, you can be handing over a business that's coming with a team that has relationships with key people, and that's very attractive to a buyer. The less involvement that an owner has, the higher multiple a business gets. So, you know, if the business owner is 100% owner operated, that gets a lower multiple than a business that is partially managed or even fully managed by a team and the business owner just overlooks the business. I mean, that's the perfect situation to get yourself into. Not always easy to do, but perfect situation when you're when you're going to sell, but also when you own the business. You want to make it as easy as you possibly can for yourself as you're running your business.

SPEAKER_00

Yeah, to future-proof for yourself. That that's an interesting point that you picked up from Tony Robbins to have uh two people capable of doing any any one task. Um because, you know, people get sick or what have you, or they leave and so on, just to build that resilience in as best you possibly can. With the valuation, so that we'll speak to the multiples a little bit and how that might work. And and I suppose we'll speak mostly for the Australian what the multiples might be in your typical trade. But also that I want to talk about the like the time frame people are kind of looking at. Is it a couple of years of books they want to see, or how does that all play out?

SPEAKER_02

So, generally speaking, so we have an appraisal team that do all of our appraisals, and they've been doing that since 2004. So they're very experienced. What they do is they look at four years of profit-loss balance sheets. Now, obviously, the most recent one is going to be the most important because they're going to see that, you know, hopefully the business is growing over the years, and wow, look what it's doing now. And then, of course, most buyers want to see potential. So, you know, we'll always say, you know, these are avenues that you have that the owners haven't expanded on yet and and be selling a little bit of what could happen in the business. Although, just to clarify that people don't pay anything for potential, they just want to see that there is potential. So most buyers want to buy something that's yes, successful, it's running profitably. It's very hard to sell a business that's not running profitably, but they want to see that they would be able to purchase it, build on it, make more money out of it, and uh increase the value of their asset.

SPEAKER_00

Yeah. And so with the uh I guess the the reliable income where where trades are able to do some form of recurring income, is that is that is that a possibility? I mean, I I know one guy who who has a subscription model for his um his maintenance-related electric electrical works, and he's super keen to build that side of the business simply because he has the view that one day he'll sell. I think he's got a you know, uh, you know, five, six-year window where he wants to build something, exit. Um, and so he's that's what he's focused on. Is that is that true? Is that the kind of thing people are most keen to purchase?

SPEAKER_02

Absolutely. Anything that has a recurring revenue of a monthly amount is is gold to a buyer. You know, it's probably a little bit trickier to try and get that sort of business model in a trade industry. But if you can, if you can think of a way of doing it, I know that air conditioning cleaning companies, for example, a lot of those have regular maintenance for their corporate clients, and that that would be considered, you know, regular, regular work. So I think that if you can get your business doing that, as I said, might be a little bit trickier for a trade, but if there's a way of making it happen and the trade themselves would know whether that that was a potential thing to have, then by all means get that happening.

SPEAKER_00

I think so. The the um the ones that come to mind where you can do that is the you know, the minimum minimum standards for rentals, if you're doing maintenance-related works, all those are minimum standards are the gas checking, the electricals, um, the you know, smoke alarms, these kind of things, whilst they feel like they're smaller jobs, they are recurring because people need them, you know, every couple of years or a year, whatever it is. I think I don't know if it's nationally, but I think uh smoke detectors are uh every year and then gas might be every two years, and and the um I think the electric electrical safety might be two years as well. So those kind of those kind of things, whilst they might not feel that enticing, certainly if you're building something to to sell, if there's something like that um that you can sort of focus on a little bit, um, would be pretty powerful. What other kind of things uh that can boost um your your end sale exit price?

SPEAKER_02

Is there um another yeah another thing is you know the your lead generation tools. So if you've got a fabulous website with some sort of lead generation or um you would know the terminology more than I would, where you've got a landing page. If you've got a landing page that automatically puts that client into your database when they've made an inquiry, then those sort of things where you're not having to constantly be ringing and chasing chasing new business, so you've got some sort of lead source, that is gold to a buyer. So, you know, make sure you've got a great website, landing page, automated uh name and address that comes back to you when they've put something into your website, that's very, very handy. Um, those digital assets Yeah.

SPEAKER_00

And building up even a ranking in in Google, so I mean, this is this is my world. So if you can get a website that's ranking number one for your particular trade in your in your region, people want that. Because that's hard to get. I don't know if you've seen a business in yeah.

SPEAKER_02

Well, it's not only hard to get it, it takes a long time to build it to that point. So, you know, if you're selling a business that's yes, Google ranking number one, and that's one of the questions that we ask when we're doing the appraisal, you know, where what's your social media and your website? And and then we'll have a look at some of them and go, oh my gosh, their websites are you know, you know, you could be doing all these little things as you're building your business up.

SPEAKER_00

Yeah. Yeah, all these assets you know, if you buy a franchise, these are all the things you get, and that's why you spend a fortune, or sometimes spend a fortune getting a franchise, because all of these assets that people can just take them on and they're done. So if you can build that into your own smaller business, um someone can take it on, and it's just one less hassle for them. You know, there's going to be um teething problem taking on a business, there's gonna be um, you know, that learning and and figuring out how it all works, even if you've got great systems. So that the more you can um have everything readied for them, the better. The what the one thing so you touched on the databases, uh and just a tip from my perspective, being a marketing guy, um, so people build out their email, their database with emails and so on, phone numbers, etc. Um, but then they don't ever send anything to them. And so those stale uh email lists aren't anywhere near as valuable for the end user than uh an active list. Reason being, if you if you subscribe somehow and you end up on someone's database, but you don't hear from them for years, you've forgotten all about them. So once you send an email, they just unsubscribe. So the biggest reason why people unsubscribe from a list is not because you've emailed too much, oftentimes, it's because you've not emailed enough and they've forgotten who you are. So some of these things, these marketing cadences, I guess you would say, if you're active and you and you're doing the work so someone else can take it on, um, that that's powerful as well.

SPEAKER_02

Do you Oh, 100%. I 100% agree with you. So it's a matter of building your database. So you want to have a database of leads and your clients, so it's some sort of tagging system, ideally, that you can separate, you know, who's who on your database, who are actual clients, who are leads. And the other one that we haven't mentioned yet is referral partners. So, you know, if you've got real estate agents that refer you work or strata companies, people that are referring you work, get them onto a separate database or in your database tagged as you know, a referral partner. And then what you want to be doing is keeping in touch with absolutely all of those people. Now, if you're tied up or you might just have a standard email that you send out to everyone, or you might tailor make the emails to your referral partners or to your um your clients and to your leads so that you're slightly varying it with who they are. But that referral partner list is like gold when you're going to sell. If they know that you've got a list of 20 real estate or strata's or whoever that refer to you, and you're happy to give that database over and do a warm email handover saying, Look, guys, I've sold my business. These are the new owners, they're absolutely amazing. They've been shadowing me for the last month. I'm really impressed with their services. Here they are, and then obviously those new owners would then maybe follow that up a couple of days later with another email, even a phone call, just to cement those relationships that have been built over that time. So, like I said, get that database happening. Uh, you know, there's lots of CRMs that you can put into your business that help with all of that, or like I said, you don't have to have it fancy, you could do it in Google Sheets or Excel if you want to, but make sure you get that database happening.

SPEAKER_00

Yeah, that's that's a really great tip. And so you mentioned the shadowing aspect, that transition time. How much of that are buyers wanting? Or what what what's the what's the best practical way? So you mentioned the shadowing, so they sort of that, you know, a month or whatever it is, they're just watching and handing over. Do sometimes they want the founder to stick around for a length of time to get those relationships established, or or people prefer just to go with a clean slate and the the founder to to go away because he's an interruption or you know, um, you know, going to cause more harm than good. What what what's the real take on the thing? An interesting question.

SPEAKER_02

It depends on the buyer and the seller, really, because some buyers literally don't they just want the digital handover, especially if they're already already an established business. They just want the database, they just want to grow them, grow their business, perhaps grow their team with the staff. And they don't particularly want much of a handover. But if it's a a new business owner going into a business that they're buying, 30 days is generally the standard. So they the the vendor will work with them for around 30 days, just holding their hands, seeing if they've got any questions, explaining how it all works, introducing them to key people. Uh, but some buyers do want longer, you won't. Probably find many vendors that want to stay on for six months or a year, otherwise they wouldn't be selling it. So 30 days is generally what we see.

SPEAKER_00

Yeah, okay. And so they that gives them a chance to, if they've got really strong referral partners, that realistically they're not going to have thousands of them, but they might have no half a dozen, a dozen really, really solid referral partners that they really want to connect that strong connection because it's a relationship sort of thing. Um yeah, that that makes sense. And so with the your team, so do they look at your employ who you've employed and and how long they've been around and um you know the uh uh reliability of them sticking around? Because I suppose they would they'd be super keen if they've got a a team that they would stay. Um how do they look at that?

SPEAKER_02

Yeah, it look it's it's a case-by-case situation. Most of the time, team members are looking to stay on with the new owner, unless you've got a an owner that's going to totally disrupt the whole team and cause their life living hell, you will generally find that a buyer won't want to lose the team members because often they have a relationship with the clients and the referrals, and sometimes it's really hard to get good tradies. So if there's good traders in the business that have got some sort of relationship, the buyers will generally want to keep those people in the team. And I think it's important that, you know, as a business owner, another tip is to make sure that it's not only you that has got the relationship with all these people. Because if you can say, look, you know, this um this electrician has worked for me for for 10 years, he knows all the clients, he knows the referrals, uh then they're more likely to say, well, you know, have some comfort around the fact that it's not just the owner that has those relationships that they're buying.

SPEAKER_00

Yeah. And so with my we touched on the multiples. What what kind of can you is there a broadly speaking, what kind of multiple are we looking at? And maybe just explain how that kind of works.

SPEAKER_02

So the multiples are worked out based on number one, what the uh profit is. So and I don't do the appraisals, so I'm not going to give you exact figures because I don't know what they are, but so we our appraisal team does this. But basically, what happens is if you've got a profitable business that's running at a profit of under 100,000 and it's owner operated, that's going to get your lowest multiple. Then it increases the multiples start going up after that. So say you've still got the same profit level, but it's partially managed, so you've got a team that does most of the work, and then you just work in the business part-time or work on the business, that gets a better multiple. And then the highest multiple is the ones where they're fully operated and the owner doesn't have any involvement in the day-to-day work. So, say they might do, I don't know, five hours a week just checking on things or whatever, but it's completely uh managed by a team or a team of people. So then the multiples increase as that profit margin goes up. So businesses with say more than 100,000 up to 150, and then it has a sliding scale that goes up from there. So, yes, the more profit you can get and the less involvement you as the owner has is going to get you the highest multiple that you can achieve.

SPEAKER_00

Yeah. Yeah, just thinking through so how to how to get that number as high as you can. So I suppose if you one way of looking at it, if you're planning an exit, is to to think about maybe ramping up things like marketing to really grow and accelerate your growth for a for a for a time, and then maybe you maybe you can dial it back a touch um so that spend isn't quite as quite as as high as what it might have been in the growth phase. So then your numbers are stacking up even even better.

SPEAKER_02

Sorry, what was that last question?

SPEAKER_00

Yeah, do people sort of think about that? So spend quite, you know, invest in your growth strategies um for a season for for a number of whatever the pro, you know, the a few years, and then dial it back a bit so then the numbers are are are better, showing better for the few years before sale? Is that something? Oh, absolutely.

SPEAKER_02

If you're ramping up your business and you're working on it, you probably will be spending more on marketing, maybe even a business coach trying to improve your figures and your bottom line. So it's not just about you know the revenue, it's about the bottom line and making that business as profitable as you possibly can. And of course, you can overspend on things. So you just want to be making sure that whatever money you are spending really is improving the revenue and the bottom line. So you know, smart marketing strategies and and yes, you could dial it back in the the last four months as long as that's not going to drop the revenue. Because if you start seeing a revenue drop, you're gonna spook the buyers, they're gonna want to know why. Why is this revenue dropping?

SPEAKER_00

Yeah.

unknown

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00

So the way I see it from my side of things is if you were to think about that, like SEO search engine optimization, it does take time. So you could look at doing that and ramping it up over a number of years, getting to a point, it's you're not gonna fall off a cliff once you've got really strong rankings. You could probably dial that back a touch, and then all of a sudden your expenditure's down in the marketing department, but your profit hasn't dropped off because you've um, you know, your your profits increased because you know the sales haven't haven't fallen off a cliff.

SPEAKER_02

And then you've just got to keep on top of those clients that you picked up through your marketing and make sure that your your revenues staying stable, definitely.

SPEAKER_00

And with the so the founder's salary, how does that work in? Because presumably people are sometimes not paying them a typical themselves a typical wage that they would have if they if they were employed, you know? Um figure that out.

SPEAKER_02

Well, what happens is the owner's uh wage or the owner's drawings or whatever gets added to the profit margin. So when we're working out those multiples, the owner's income is taken out. So that way we work out what the profit plus the owner's income is, and that's why we work out the the amended net profit of the business.

SPEAKER_00

Yeah, okay. So so roughly speaking, if you were to if you were to figure out the so if you're just one and the same in the business, you know, you you take your you draw take drawings, um, whatever it is. Um, so if you kind of figure out roughly speaking what you would be paid um if you were an employee and my and deduct that from the total, then that's the true business profit that potentially you'd get a multiple.

SPEAKER_02

Well, for one, you'll get the multiple even adding back that whole owner's wage. So for one person, like the owner, we add that wage on top of the profit and then the multiples worked out on that. If you've got two two owners, for example, which is really common as well, we normalize that one owner's profit. They might be overpaying themselves drastically or even underpaying themselves drastically. So we normalize that wage and then work the multiple out based on what you know, what would we normally be paying someone in that role?

SPEAKER_00

Yeah, gotta, because sometimes if it's a couple, um, a family business, maybe there's two people getting a smaller salary or something, and um, whereas realistically speaking, there's there's one that should have been earning a higher income and and less, but they've got the numbers a certain way for their for their own reasons.

SPEAKER_02

That makes a lot of sense. So we do all of that adjusting. So it doesn't really matter whether you're overpaying or underpaying. When we do the appraisals, we do adjust all of that. So that part of it is okay. You can pay yourself as much or as little as you like, and then that's all accounted for when the appraisal's done.

SPEAKER_00

Goes through. Yeah, that makes that makes a lot of sense. So so for your because obviously you're on the gold coast, but it'd be similar all around Australia, and the same principles will apply, I doubt, globally. But what do you how do you see the market right now? Do you think there's people out there shopping for businesses? Or, you know, you we we often hear of the aging population and potentially advanced people, you know, eventually looking to to either close, close up shop or or exit in so in some way. Is there is there more businesses coming on the market as a consequence of that, or is that predicted to to occur at any given time?

SPEAKER_02

There is, depending on the industries. So, you know, yes, aging population with business owners looking to retire, taking advantage of some of the tax incentives that are out there if they've owned the business for a certain number of years. There's all sorts of reasons that people sell. But one thing to know is that 80% roughly of businesses that go to market don't sell. So you want to give yourself the absolute best chance of selling possible. And the ways to do that are number one, make sure that it's priced right. A lot of people go to market at really unrealistic prices. You don't want to do that. You want to use a professional broker that's going to handle the sale professionally, represent your business professionally, and be on top of every single buyer. So, you know, you want to make sure that your inquiries are answered same day, on top of them, following up, answering questions quickly and professionally, presenting documents properly. So, you know, if you're going to sell, you want to make sure that an accountant has prepared your financials, not just you out of your zero. Do things properly, present in the absolute best manner possible, with, like I said, as much as you can with your lead sources, your referral lists, or all the things that little things that you can be doing in the years that you're building your business, so that one day when you want to sell, it's ready to sell and it's easy to sell. Businesses that are well presented sell. Businesses that aren't making profit or they're complicated or they're too hard to take over, they sit on the market and they don't sell.

SPEAKER_00

Yeah. And so to think that through what it what else might cause. So the expectations maybe, maybe someone feels as though their business is uh worth more than what realistically it it it might sell for. The other thing maybe, and you mentioned this as well, um, you can't sell a secret. So do you get it, do you get a few people saying, hey, I want to sell my business, but I don't want anyone to know that it's up for sale? Is that kind of a thing? I can imagine it would be.

SPEAKER_02

Oh, it totally is a thing, and it's a great thing. So uh what I was meaning by don't sell a secret is the part about the cash. You can't sell, oh, I take cash, but I can't tell you how much it is, and it doesn't go through the books. Well, that's the secret that we can't sell. For a business sale, we never ever list the business name unless the people are really adamant that they want people to know. Because for two reasons. Number one, it can, especially if you've got team members, it can spook the staff. It can also let the opposition know that you've um, you know, you've got your business. Oh, they're selling, don't go through them, go through me. You don't want your business name to be out in the marketplace as selling unless it's really, really necessary for the sale, which is very rare. So we always use generic photos, we always use, you know, vague descriptions of the business until someone has signed a confidentiality agreement, we've checked their identification and made sure that they are a genuine buyer, not your opposition, trying to find out information about your business and all of those sort of things. But like I said, it can spook staff as well. If you've got staff members that know that you're selling, and you're like, oh my gosh, we're gonna lose our jobs, and off they go. Next thing you've got a business that hasn't got any team members left, and it's tricky. So we don't recommend listing a name.

SPEAKER_00

Yeah, it can be incredibly disruptive for a whole bunch of reasons, and that makes a lot of sense. So and you put in one disclosure for the serious potential buyers to to sign before they before they get that info. That's brilliant. I love I love what you're doing, and as you say, I think, and I agree wholeheartedly, you should build your business with the exit in mind. Um even if you plan to do it for many years, something might change, you know, circumstances change all the time. So it's been a brilliant conversation. So anything we haven't covered, any question I haven't asked that that I should have, and what would be the answer to that?

SPEAKER_02

No, I don't think so. I feel like we've covered pretty much everything, but the only thing that I would say is that you know, there's all sorts of options for a business sale. So, you know, that we, for example, have a a system called for sale by owner, and we get every single bit of marketing and everything done for you, it's just that the inquiries go to you. So even for a cheap business, there's options. So it doesn't matter whether you're looking at a really cheap exit or a, you know, a million millions of dollars exit. There's options out there. So don't think that just because you're a small business, you shouldn't be thinking about these extra exit strategies. And you mightn't be able to take on absolutely all of the suggestions that I've had, but at least take on some of them.

SPEAKER_00

Yeah. Yeah, 100%. I mean, my ex-father-in-law here now passed it. I think they they only could sell for the um for the assets, I think, you know, that that business held just because um that some of these things weren't, you know, built in. So if you if you don't build your business right, all you'll get is bittens for the few assets that you've got it, you know, which get the get these things right and who knows how much um you might exit for. And you know, the even if you don't need planning, you you get that legacy to pass on to the generations that come after you, that all these things that it's worthwhile. You you you invest so much of your time and effort and and put so much risk into business, you should be rewarded uh for that effort and and to get these things right. I love this conversation. It's been brilliant. Well, it's been great. Thank you. Yeah, how should people connect with you? Obviously, if they're in the Gold Coast or your region, you you can serve them as well.

SPEAKER_02

Oh, absolutely. So we actually sell businesses in Queensland and New South Wales. Uh happy to have conversations with anyone though. And yeah, so I've got a Facebook page, it's called Anita Marshall Business Broker. My email address is Anita at Gold Coast Businessbrokers.com.au. And we also have a website, goldcoastbusinessbrokers.com.au. So any of those are fabulous. But I'd love you to reach out to me on Facebook and send me a message. Tell me if you've enjoyed the the conversation, and it's been fabulous. I've really enjoyed being on here, and I hope that I've given some of your tradies some valuable tips.

SPEAKER_00

Absolutely. And I'll put all the links in the in the show notes as well so people can find you nice and easy. So thanks so much, Anita.

SPEAKER_01

Amazing. Thank you for having me. Bye everyone. Thanks for listening to Built, Trusted, Chosen. Brought to you by Uplift360. Visit Uplift360.com.au