Exit Ready: How to Build a Business Worth Buying with Gil Poulin

[00:07] Jeff McLarty
Ever wonder what it really takes to build a business from the ground up? Welcome to Owner’s Roundtable, where successful business owners pull up a chair and swap stories and lessons from their own adventures in business. From surviving their first half-baked business plan, the time they almost went broke, the time they got lucky, and the strategies and tactics they used along the way.

This isn’t about a polished success story on the company About Us page; it’s about the real story behind the business. The pain, the people, the setbacks, and the big break that changed everything. Each episode, you’ll sit down with the owners who’ve been in the trenches, build something meaningful, and live to tell the tale. Whether you’re starting out, scaling up, or just curious what it takes to go the distance, there’s a seat at the owner’s roundtable for you. Subscribe now on Apple, Spotify, or wherever you listen to podcasts. I’m Jeff McLarty, seasoned entrepreneur, executive coach, and business trainer, and I want you to have your own seat with us here at the Owner’s Roundtable. Real owners, real stories, real insights.

[01:16] Jeff McLarty
Hello and welcome to Owner’s Roundtable. Today at the table is Gil Poulin, a successful serial entrepreneur and current owner of the Affordable Business Partner, providing selling support and advice to exiting business owners. Today Gil and I will talk about transitioning ownership, creating resale value, and the personal challenges that exiting owners face, here at the Owner’s Roundtable. Let’s get started.

[01:36] Jeff McLarty
We’re back here at the owner’s round table with Gil Poulin. For listeners that don’t know you, Gil, why don’t you tell us a little bit about yourself?

[01:43] Gil Poulin
Well currently, I own a company called the Affordable Business Partner. And I help business owners buy and sell small independent businesses. What I mean by that is sales of two and a half million dollars and under.

Owners sometimes just need some help. They understand the basics of selling a business. They don’t understand all the nuances and maybe some of the philosophical things that need to be done in order to impress a buyer. And at the end of it all, that’s what you’re trying to do, is to sell your story to a buyer that they can vision themself as being. Say, the lead actor or lead character in that story moving forward. So for now, that’s what’s keeping me busy.

[02:21] Jeff McLarty
You and I have had a number of conversations over the years of, like, what it’s like to sell a business and what the opposite side of that looks like. How many have you bought and sold yourself over the years?

[02:32] Gil Poulin
Well personally I’m at forty-two businesses. I got my start many years ago; pretty close to fifty years ago, I sold my first business. It was just a little lunch truck type of operation, where I delivered snacks to industrial offices and plants. A set time schedule every week. And within about six months of building what we would call a route, I was approached by one of my customers to buy my business and that’s how I kind of fell into it.

Back then I didn’t know anything. Nothing whatsoever. It wasn’t even on my radar. So it was a little bit of a surprise but when I went and visited the couple what I’d realized is they had actually bought one of these vehicles in an auction but didn’t know how to go out and make sales. And that was something that kind of fell to me naturally.

They asked me what I wanted for the route, I had no understanding. They weren’t buying the truck. I didn’t own the truck at the time. I was leasing it. So I just threw a number out there: $10,000. Now, to people listening today $10,000 is not a lot of money. But if you go back 50 years ago $10,000 is a substantial amount of money.

So we ended up settling on $7500, which made me pretty happy. And within three weeks I was out building another route. And as time progressed, I guess I became a business reseller or what the younger generation calls a flipper nowadays. I would buy distressed businesses and put a little bit of energy, effort, capital cost into the business themselves, make them cash positive, and then flip them. And I did 40 in about a 30-year span.

[04:09] Jeff McLarty
You know, it it takes a special kind of personality to want to go into a business that’s broken and, uh, and fix it.

[04:16] Gil Poulin
And what I found, Jeff, was most of the people who had purchased…I focused on industrial snack bars, delicatessen, burger stands, that type of deal. I did venture out into bigger bakeries down the road when I got more experience. But the principles were the same.

And the people that I met – it wasn’t that they weren’t smart people, they just understand the day to day needs of a business owner. And so that’s what happened. And the businesses themselves, were good solid businesses. I’ve never met a business that I didn’t like. It’s just a matter of, can you put the right energy into it to make it go the right way? And they just became more and more frustrated.

And then what would happen is they would scale back on everything they were doing in the food business. They would use older product or less of a product, trying to recover some of the lost sales that they didn’t understand they were losing. And basically at the end of it all, there’s one recipe in the food business: put out the best product that you can for the best price, and you’ll do okay.

[05:09] Jeff McLarty
So if you had to say the one thing that you were doing differently from the people you were buying these distressed businesses from, was it going back to focusing on quality product or, like, how did you turn those businesses around?

[05:22] Gil Poulin
I experimented, first of all. But secondly, what I was buying was infrastructure. And at the time, when I was younger, I didn’t know better. I just thought, okay, if this has a grill and has a deep fryer or what have you – the equipment – I’m gonna sell this type of product. And then I would go and research it. Back then we didn’t have the internet at our disposal. So I would go to other places that were busy. If it was a burger stand and it was busy, I would probably eat there four or five times to see why they were busy. And then I would not copy it, but I would take some of what I learned from that and then add my own thing.

The one component that I did was I did a lot of promoting. Every day between one and three o’clock, I went out and knocked on doors. And just said hi, I’m the owner. I know you probably didn’t go and patronize this business before, but I’d like to have a second shot at it. Here’s a two for one, here’s a fifty percent off, here’s something, And that worked really well as long as you consistently do it and back it up with really, really good product.

I was explaining this to a business owner just a while ago, and I said if the two of us went to a place and had dinner and the meal came to a hundred dollars, but the meal wasn’t fantastic. And a week later we went to another location and ate at a different place, and the meal was $150 at the end of it all. But the meal was fantastic. Where would we go for our third meal? We’d always go to the better place, right, for the third meal. I think that’s the principles in any type of business.

I sell all different types of businesses and I think the people who are successful in selling their business get that.

[06:53] Jeff McLarty
People will pay for quality and value versus cheap. I mean there is a customer segment that wants the lowest possible price, but they tend not to be very loyal customers.

[07:02] Gil Poulin
And I’m fortunate enough in my industry, when the first thing that they want to focus on is not my experience and my successes or my method, is how much I’m gonna charge them. I already kind of know that we’re probably not gonna do business together, because that’s kind of how the flavor of the transaction is gonna go moving forward. It’s not about, always, the money. Sometimes you need to understand the metrics of your own business and what it’s really worth, not what you think it’s worth.

If you’ve gotten some bad advice before you meet me, chances are our conversation won’t be that long. Because I just like to be straightforward.

[07:41] Jeff McLarty
It’s always something I’ve always appreciated about you is, you know, this is the way it is and if you don’t agree with that, we don’t have to do business.

[07:48] Gil Poulin
Going back one of your original questions, so 42 businesses of my own, and I’m probably close to over 200 of other people’s businesses in one form or another, helping others. After a while you just kind of understand the lessons.

[08:04] Jeff McLarty
What do you think the biggest things are that creates value in a business when it’s up for sale? Like what do you think is the most important thing people should be focusing on if they got one eye on an exit in the next few years?

[08:16] Gil Poulin
I’m gonna say two. A, doing a good job at telling your story. The biggest thing that buyers see when they come to a business or are feeling is fear. Fearing that they’re gonna put X amount of dollars of their family’s money into something that isn’t successful.

And the second one is processes. What are the processes that you use for everything from going from A to B, whether it’s building your product, selling your product, putting marketing out there, what’s working for you, what’s not. I guess in a way, a business plan. But not a business plan to sell your business or to get financing, a business operational manual, for lack of a better word, moving forward. Can you show me how I can succeed? If you can do that and your numbers make sense, your success rate just jumps.

And there’s an interesting stat that most business owners don’t know. Less than fifty percent of businesses that hit the marketplace actually sell. And I’ve seen that number go as low as twenty-five percent. And I see that because I see businesses that have been on the market for years, they’re just not getting any traction. They haven’t told the story, they haven’t priced their business properly. And they haven’t really looked at their business from the outside in, from a buyer’s perspective. So.

[09:29] Jeff McLarty
You raised an important point. When you’re trying to sell a business, you’ve been stuck in it. Like it’s your life and you see it from the inside. I always joke about the owner who’s never – doesn’t know that the sign out front is broken because he always comes in the back door. It’s hard to see your business from that external perspective. And I think being able to look at it like if you were the one buying it. What does that look like from the outside? I think that’s a good place to start when you start thinking about what it might be worth to somebody else. What would you pay for it coming in without your own perspective?

[10:04] Gil Poulin
Yeah, and I agree. Fundamentally, basically what happens is a buyer comes into a business with approximately 30% down. This is a general number, but that’s the one I always work with. If the cash flow can service the business – debt service – and provide a good income, banks are more, lenders are more apt to lend money.

It’s black and white. It’s not a gray area. That’s just how they do it. I work with lenders all the time. That’s just the process. So if that happens, the next step is, now I want to show you how I make the money. I want to show you from the outside in to make you have confidence that you can do this as well.

One of the things that I have an issue with in my industry is the training. The typical training in the industry given out to maybe inexperienced brokers, they suggest to their clients, is a two-week period. You know, you want to sell your business. If the person who’s buying your business needs a month, give them a month. Structure, take the time. They’re gonna write the check. Give them the month, and make sure that you send them off in a good positive way. Not only is it a good way to sell a business, it’s just good karma. It’s just good business karma.

[11:12] Jeff McLarty
Yeah, I mean you want to set people up for success ’cause after you’ve worked that hard at something, to see it pulled apart is a very frustrating experience.

You wanna see what you built continue, right? And why would you not wanna train the person that’s coming in? And looking at it more as a partnership versus you’re trying to get somebody’s money so that you can get out of this, I think that’s a better way to look at selling a business.

[11:34] Gil Poulin
Well, to give you an example, back in the flipping days when I was starting off, I had no books. I was a young guy out of high school. I didn’t know nothing about taxes or books or anything else. I just knew how to make sales. That’s what I knew how to do. And that’s how I started. So I was selling businesses on a rate of every nine or ten months. And had no real financial data to back it.

So back then I would just have the people sit in the chair and watch the sales come through the door. And at the end of it all, they would actually take care of the numbers and add them up at the end of the day. I said, you know, the sales are gonna jump 10%. And they were a little slower on the Mondays and the Tuesdays in the food business, but as the week progressed, they usually got larger. And that’s it.

And then the second thing that I would tell them is, you’re gonna know this business as well as I do by the time you take this business over, whether it takes two weeks, three weeks, or four weeks.

I made sure that they understood the business, and I also made sure that if they wanted to phone me after they had the keys to the door, they could do that. And the funny thing happened, that created networking for me, because there’s a matter of trust when you sell a business to somebody.

I always suggest when they look under the hood it’s what you tell them it is.

[12:52] Jeff McLarty
Exactly. Do you really want them coming back at you for giving false information, right? It’s not worth it.

[12:52] Gil Poulin
And it’s just a bad way to do business. There’s a limited amount of business owners in this world. Roughly it’s five to seven percent of businesses that you can make a living from and support your family or your lifestyle. It really is a small world. I publish a newsletter and it goes out to roughly fourteen thousand people.

And I’m surprised that I don’t hear from somebody for four or five years and then all of a sudden, bang, out of nowhere. I’m flattered, but they’ve been reading my newsletter for four or five years, and then all of a sudden they have a question and that leads to something else. So people have long memories.

[13:26] Jeff McLarty
It is kind of fun once you’re in business, realizing how small that community is. And it’s almost like a – I don’t want to say fraternity – but like it changes you running a business, it changes the way you look at the world. You can almost see it in other people without asking them, have you run a business? It’s just how they interact and that’s…do you find that as well, that changes people running a business?

[13:47] Gil Poulin
Well if I’m in any social venture, a wedding, a community… Where we live, there’s always community functions, what have you. I gravitate towards anybody who owns a business. I can stand in the corner and have a beverage with them and talk for hours about their business, just learning the pros and the cons, the similarities between their business and my business. It’s one of those things and I don’t think it’s any different for other business owners as well.

In the old days, nowadays you go online to find businesses that you want to purchase or sell. In the old days we used to use newspapers in the back of the classified ads. And I used to, in my restaurant, sell the Calgary Sun or whatever the newspaper was at the time. And the first page that I looked at every single morning was businesses for sale. Every single morning, it was the first thing I went to.

And I don’t think it’s any different. I think if you go to business owners and look at the blogs they read and the podcasts that they’re on, they’re almost always orientated around business. As you know, you’re always thinking about business.

[14:46] Jeff McLarty
Yeah, it’s a job hazard we do for a living is constantly thinking about business. I thought about business so much it became a full time job for me.

[14:55] Gil Poulin
Yes. And it’s a good thing. It’s not a bad thing. I love it. I’m an old guy. I should be retired by now. I don’t need to work. But the reality is I like what I do. I like meeting people, I like helping people, I like learning. I still learn things. It’s amazing about different industries. We were discussing off camera, AI, that’s a big thing as well. So.

[15:17] Jeff McLarty
I wonder how long it’ll be till the AIs start owning businesses and we all work for them.

[15:22] Gil Poulin
I think it’s gonna be interesting. Like I’m sixty seven this year, so I hope I’m kicking around in twenty years, ’cause I’m really curious on how it’s gonna turn out.

Even though I don’t think the nuances or the philosophical stuff behind it or the understanding of how to tell a story, that type of deal. I don’t think that’ll be really covered. I think there’ll always be a need for a personal side to it. And a lot of times, brokers and realtors, commercial realtors don’t focus enough on the story itself. And it’s really, really important.

The newer generations that are coming up buying businesses. Fifty percent of them only want to look at franchises. And the reason behind it is they think it’s business in a box. They’re gonna have the same issues as an independent business owner, they’re gonna have the same problems. But they just feel more secure. Because the franchises have gone a long way into making them feel secure by putting those processes that we were talking about earlier into effect. And independent business owners know in their head how to run their business, but they don’t know how to show somebody or articulate that to somebody else.

[16:29] Jeff McLarty
What do you think makes a good franchise versus a bad franchise to deal with? ‘Cause I know there’s a ton of franchises out there these days. And for people who haven’t owned one before, what do you think they should be looking for if they’re looking at buying into a franchise?

[16:43] Gil Poulin
Territory size is a big one. If I was to start all over, and I was a young guy, and everything I learned – and I’ve sold franchises. I’ve sold all the brands that can come to mind right now. The reality is the bigger brands that everybody sees on TV advertising all the time, they close stores too. People think that franchises are this indestructible type of business model, but that’s not true.

If you listen, Starbucks will close three thousand stores in this year and Wendy’s. And the biggest thing is that, A, they’re oversaturated, but, B, the territorial size of the surrounding area, if you’re buying retail, I’m gonna use that as an example, is shrunken.

Just think about how many sandwich shops there are in a retail location in any neighborhood. Sometimes there’s two or three of the same brand. Right? So I that’s the biggest thing. And I think what happens is the brand itself gets so large that the connection between the franchisor and the franchisee, it erodes. So I sold a sandwich shop, a big one that you would know, and the bureaucracy that we had to go in order to just sell that was – it didn’t make sense.

And so first of all I would never buy a franchise unless it had 50 stores. Okay, and that’s the first thing that I would look at. And then secondly, is the market gonna be relevant in ten years, fifteen years? Do we really need a brand new burger franchise? Right?

But. I’m from the old school that there’s enough energy, resources, there’s guys like you that can help people with a few questions that they may have about moving their – the needle forward a little bit.

[18:14] Jeff McLarty
One thing about franchising is, sometimes they don’t adapt. Like, the business world changes and they have baked in systems that have worked in the past. It might have been a really good system at one point. And once they find that recipe they’re hesitant to change anything ’cause they’re not entirely sure what’s making it work sometimes, I think.

And then the franchisees are bound to that system. And even if they know that things need to change ’cause they’re the ones on the ground, it can be really challenging with that franchisee-franchisor relationship to have that conversation and move an organization on the ground

[18:50] Gil Poulin
So, again, I’ve been selling business for a long time. I’ve probably sold thirty different franchise models. And you’re right. So what happens is the owner comes up with an idea and then sells that idea and sells processes, and is supposed to be improving those processes. But they get to a certain, I think, number of franchises and it becomes overwhelming on their end.

They’re trying to do everything that needs to be done, instead of spending a little extra money and hiring people that could improve the marketing, could create, if it’s in the food environment, new type of dishes. They stay with the same menu over and over and over again and then wonder why the sales are dropping.

But they don’t see it as much because they’re selling these other franchises. So their coffers are still being filled up. But they’re not listening to the people, like you said, the people who are running the stores. And then a lot of times some of the people who are running the stores – they don’t have that spirit. They just do what the franchise tells them to do.

And you know, if you really, anybody who’s listening, if you if you really think about all the different franchises that are out there. There’s quite a few of them that have come by the wayside that are still around, but they’re not doing very well. When you drive by their parking lots, they’re not very full. They’re just eeking out a living, which is unfortunate.

[20:06] Jeff McLarty
To tie it back to what we were talking about, what brings value to selling a business, it’s, people want to buy a system that works.

That they get to be their own boss. But they want to have a recipe to start with. If they didn’t need a recipe book they’d go start their own business. Where do you think the first place to start is when people are trying to create a system that people can really buy into?

[20:30] Gil Poulin
Well what really helped me, I was you know, the first ten food businesses in, younger. People are saying, well, you were flipping these businesses and making this capital, but I was reinvesting the capital back into a bigger business or what have you. And sometimes your ideas didn’t take over right away. So you were hemorrhaging a bit of cash along the way. But something that I got into – most of my businesses were open Monday to Friday, six in the morning till three in the afternoon. I did a lot of the industrial stuff, catering that kind of deal.

But Sundays I would go in and I would walk through my job, or I would walk through my staff’s jobs, and see how I can improve what they’re doing. How can I make it a little bit more efficient? And I think what happened at the end was, when I went to sell it and the buyers came in, they saw those efficiencies. They saw, this makes sense, this makes sense, this makes sense.

Going back to what you were saying, sometimes you get caught in a rut. You don’t look at your business that way. And things that you’re doing don’t make sense. And sometimes even if somebody tells you it doesn’t make sense, you’re too stubborn to listen.

But in doing that, I always found different ways. It could be as simple as moving a cooler eight feet across to the prep table instead of having them walk twelve steps to the cooler, they would just turn around and pull something out of the cooler.

Now multiply that by six staff, five days a week, eight hours a day. Those steps cost money. I was an owner that I said to my staff, does this make sense to you? Yeah, this is great. Or no. But we became more and more efficient. So I hope that kind of answers your question. A little bit is efficiency, and understanding processes.

[22:14] Jeff McLarty
It’s amazing how much a business is a game of inches. Like little changes that make things run smoothly.

[22:21] Gil Poulin
Even, you know, I pump out hundreds of emails a week because for my clients’ businesses, and just changing the reply emails that I send to people, my interest rate has gone up by like twenty-five percent. It was the same message. It just – I had some help in reforming the message, and now my metrics have gone through the roof, just because someone was a little smarter than I was in how to just simply reply to somebody.

[22:49] Jeff McLarty
It’s amazing how just that, get it just right, how effective it can be. And if it’s just wrong, how frustrating it can be when it doesn’t work right.

[22:58] Gil Poulin
Here at the house we’re doing – my wife’s part of the business and we’re doing a think tank for lack of a better word, on restructuring our whole entire website because some of my customers said we’re not really quite sure a hundred percent what your messaging is. And I know the messaging, but that’s not what’s important. My clients need to know the messaging.

And with the different type of cultures that are out there right now, you even need to improve your messaging even more. Because they look at things differently. If you’re from, you know, a different country, you look at buying a business in a different perspective or a different mindset. And how you move that process along is a little bit different than, maybe, what we’re used to here in Canada.

So we’re restructuring, we’re redoing the website hopefully within, you know, the next six or eight weeks we’ll have it all right and then I will ask many of my readers to score it. And then we’ll see what happens.

[23:49] Jeff McLarty
That’s an exciting and scary proposition. Here, tell me what I’m doing right and tell me what I’m doing wrong. All of you. Yeah.

[23:55] Gil Poulin
Yes, and you need to know what you’re doing wrong. It’s not even, you’re doing anything wrong. It’s just there’s maybe a better way of doing it. I’ve been blessed my whole entire life. I’ve always been able to put food on the table and make a decent living.

But yeah, I’m pretty straightforward and sometimes I don’t need to be straightforward. Sometimes I’m ahead of what I think my client’s learning rate is. So you know I’ve had clients say to me, slow down. It’s making sense, but I’m not learning as quickly as you’re saying it. Because it’s old hat to me.

[24:26] Jeff McLarty
It’s easy to take for granted the things that you’ve done a thousand times. I’m certainly guilty of that on occasion. I have to be pretty aware that, like, if you haven’t suffered through a lot of these problems and come out the backside, it’s easy to jump to the end, before you go through it.

One question I wanted to ask you was, so, having bought and sold that many businesses. When you came in, some of these businesses had existing staff and structures. How did you handle, you know, not causing more issues as you took over the business? How did you handle that entry process, and exit, with the staff?

[25:03] Gil Poulin
I made friends. Right off the bat I made friends. And so what I would do is I would go in on the Friday. We would tell them on Monday, and then on Friday I was taking over. And so basically what I would do is I would say on Friday, you and your family, we’re all going for dinner. My treat.

That was the first way to extend the olive branch, or what have you. And then in that, in that conversation, because people like to talk surrounded by food. If the atmosphere is good, they’re comfortable, they love to chat, and the guard’s down a little bit. Because they’re enjoying a meal, they’re with people that they know.

And then I would go around the table and say, if you were to buy this business or you owned this business, what would you do differently than what you see happening now? And regardless of what they told me, it was always a fantastic idea. And I would always say, we’re gonna go back to that. And I did.

Every second Friday, believe it or not, we would order in pizza, unless I owned a pizza store. And we would sit around, we would close the shop an hour or two early, and we would do the round table type of a deal, and we would go through that conversation again.

I never lost a staff. Many of my staff opened restaurants down the road. But I never lost a staff, because I understood that they were the most important, other than the product itself, they were the most important component to my business. Right? They’re a reflection of me.

And so that’s what I did. I made nice. And I tell that to people now: spend the money. It’s not a bill at the end when the waiter comes, it’s an investment. And that’s worked out really, really well. A lot of people came back and said thank you because some of the people were – they didn’t see the softer side, they were just scared for their jobs. It was unknown to them, what was about to happen. And once they went out and broke bread with with the new owner, everything was okay.

[26:49] Jeff McLarty
I think that’s a really great way to handle that. You know, these people have been there longer than you. Even though you bought the place, they might have some expertise you need. And even if you plan to make some changes.

I learned the hard way on my first couple of bigger organizations I ran. Coming in and changing everything ’cause you think you know better, before you actually understand why it was that way in the first place, can sometimes be a big mistake. Not learning from the people that are there already.

[27:18] Gil Poulin
Quick story, I bought a little delicatessen/snack bar, and I inherited six staff. And it was losing money. So in order to increase my sales, I closed for a few days, we painted the place, we did a bunch of stuff, all new suppliers, new menu and everything. I trained everybody over a couple of days.

And then I put a sign out on the busiest road in the industrial park and said, come meet Gil, free food, Monday and Tuesday.

So what happened was people came in, there was no prices on my menu board, but people came in, got this incredible product, right? Now you gotta remember the week or so before it was a place nobody went into. And now the place was fresh and what have you. And all of a sudden revenues went up.

But I had this particular girl who was the cashier, who I inherited. And that’s all she was. She would not move. You come into the store, wasn’t a big place. She would not bus a table if there was – if people got up and left. She would not wipe down a cooler. All she did was stand behind that till. And for weeks I said to her, please, I need your help. The volume’s going up. I need your help. So here is a list of things that you can do. It’s not crazy, but it really will help me. And she said, I don’t have to do that because the old owner didn’t make me do that.

So, I had to let her go. Because all the other staff bought into the processes. The amount of grief that I got from the existing customer base that were there before I bought the place was mind-boggling. Because what I didn’t realize was that the social aspect of what she provided to these people was way beyond what, in value, that I understood.

So lesson learned, that you have to know what the value is of each one of your staff before you let them go. And I would suggest you take six months to observe that.

[29:10] Jeff McLarty
I think there’s often a lot of soft benefits that don’t show up anywhere else unless you are paying attention. And it can be, yeah, those little things that people are coming in just to see her. Okay. Well, that’s good to know. How are we gonna handle that? I mean, I’m a big believer in processes and building systems and not building businesses based on people. But on the other hand, it’s still I mean, when you’re in a people business, that has to be taken into account. The additional value that people are bringing to a business as well, right?

[29:40] Gil Poulin
Right. And it didn’t cross my mind until it was too late. And then the grief that I got was not worth it. I didn’t follow my own advice at the time. I didn’t step back and look at my business. Right? I just looked at the finite thing that was happening right in front of me. That’s the only person I ever let go.

[29:56] Jeff McLarty
In all of those businesses, that’s the only one?

[29:57] Gil Poulin
All those businesses. Just – again, that’s who puts bread on your table, is your staff.

[30:03] Jeff McLarty
Right. Treat them well, they’ll treat you well.

[30:06] Gil Poulin
In so many different ways.

[30:08] Jeff McLarty
If we can go back to the business owner side. How do you think somebody needs to get personally ready for selling a business? So, like, if you’ve been building a business for six or eight or ten years, how hard is it to sell that business and deal with the day after? I know it was something that I struggled with after I sold. It was a little traumatic. Oh, I don’t – I wasn’t the guy anymore. Like what do you do with that? Have you dealt with that much with owners as they’re selling, or?

[30:35] Gil Poulin
Well, two parts to it. One is, a lot of the people that I help are baby boomers. And so they’ve had businesses for 10, 15, 20, 30 years. The kids don’t want to take them over, so they sell them. And I would say fifty percent of them reach out to me in two or three years down the road and need to find something to do. It’s in their blood.

And I find them stuff. It’s not, a monetary thing, it’s not an economic thing. It’s – they need something to do. They’re wired that way. Business owners, you just get wired after a while. You just, it’s just how it is.

So that would be the first thing. I think the other thing is, and this is a big one, I’m going through it now with a couple of customers. You have to take the emotion out of the sale. At the end, you have to make a decision that you’re selling your business. Period. It’s not – you can’t cherry-pick the buyer, because there’s really not that many buyers out there for your particular business.

There’s value in the business, but at the end of it, it’s an economic thing. It’s not that you worked 20 years and you started off with a small little business and you’ve grown it to 15 employees. The lenders don’t care about that. The lenders care about, does the debt service, and will my client make a good living buying this business? When I lend you the money, is it secure?

The emotion’s not involved in that whatsoever. The emotion’s good because of the passion, and if you can steal some of that passion as a buyer, then that’s fantastic. But aside from that, I hear when I start talking to people and ask them what do they feel the business is worth, they tell me, and then I I can do some quick metrics in my head and I go, you’re you’re a little high, and then they go, well, you don’t understand it has potential. All businesses have potential.

[32:11] Jeff McLarty
Yah but do you wanna pay for potential, or do you wanna pay for a plant that makes money?

[32:17] Gil Poulin
Right? So that’s it. And when I say that I’m either a bad guy, or the light bulb went off.

[32:23] Jeff McLarty
I think that’s good advice, to think about taking the emotion out of it. How long before somebody is actually needing to sell the business do you think they should start? Like how long out should they start the process?

[32:37] Gil Poulin
It depends on how organized they are on the back end. Right? So, people phone me up and say, yeah, I want to sell my business. And the first thing I ask them is, okay, so are your financials up to date? And they’re not. You know, they – they’re good till 2023. And I say, well, we need at least three years of good, accountant-produced financials. Okay. What they don’t realize is that their accountant is busy with a lot of other clients. And so now the accountant’s gonna take five weeks, six weeks, eight weeks, right off the bat. So I can do some other stuff to get them prepared on the preparation side, documentation, that type of deal. But, you know, that’s part of it.

The other part of it is is that they don’t have a lot of the information handy. And when I tell them here’s a checklist of things that you need to have handy, whether the buyer asks you or not, perhaps the lender’s gonna ask you, but someone should be asking these questions. If they don’t, whoever’s on the other side’s not approaching it properly. And I think you should impress them by giving them this extra information that they haven’t asked for, because it’ll make your end look a little bit better. A lot of responses I hear is, that’s too much work.

And I’m not trying to do the work. What I’m trying to do is before we market your business, I want you to be prepared for everything. I want you to understand why, two years ago, you had a three-month slump in your sales. Right? The gas station across the street caused problems. There could be a whole bunch things. But you need to have an answer for that, a ready answer.

And so that’s part of what I do is, in preparation, it’s not just documentation. You need to go back and look at your business over a three-year period. And your finances will usually tell you if there are some challenges or some problems with your business. And you need to be able to be forthright to the people that are buying your business. This is the reason why it happened.

If you don’t know that information, you haven’t looked at it, they’ll probably walk. Buyers don’t need a lot of concerns to walk. They’re fearful to begin with, and there is an abundance of businesses for sale.

So getting back to it, you should start right away. You don’t have to market the business. The other part of it, real quick, is that business owners don’t… they’re not good at using their time. They forget that they’re working a 35, 40, 50, 60 hour work week. And when I ask them to go do things, at the end of the day, they’re not really motivated to go and do them. And so that takes a lot longer.

And then I have other people that in five weeks were ready. So to answer your question, it’s the processes. It’s always the processes, and doing the work.

[35:03] Jeff McLarty
I appreciate all the insights you’ve shared on the business selling process and some of your own experience. Is there any other advice you’d share after going through that many businesses and helping, was it close to two hundred, other people sell their business?

[35:16] Gil Poulin
Am I putting my best foot forward? I’m gonna reap what I put into it. It’s not any different than what you do operating your business. You know, if you make the best sandwich or you do the best job printing, or whatever it is that you go and do to help your customers, you should use that same philosophy in selling your business. Am I putting my best foot forward?

How does that look at the end? We said earlier from the outside in, how am I enabling someone to be successful? And that should be right from the beginning. Is everything that I’m doing, am I doing a good job at the end, it’ll pay off. Your percentage of success will jump dramatically.

[35:51] Jeff McLarty
Well always a pleasure visiting with you Gil, and I appreciate you sharing your expertise you’ve gathered over your career of buying and selling. Thanks for coming on the Owner’s Roundtable.

[36:02] Gil Poulin
Thank you for having me, it’s been a pleasure.

[36:08] Jeff McLarty
That’s all for us here at the Owner’s Roundtable. If you’re looking for more support for your business or your own ownership journey, you can contact us at www.focalpointedmonton.com. Thanks for pulling up a chair and don’t forget to like and subscribe, so you don’t miss out on more great success stories, misadventures, lessons and advice from real business owners just like you.