Selling Buying a Business in a Pandemic

Selling Buying a Business in a Pandemic? -Not Another Covid 19 Letter

All of our mailboxes are filling up with businesses sending us a letter on the Covid 19 Virus and their respective plans to keep all safe and continue or discontinue operations.  This is not one of those letters.  I am a Business Broker.  I am also a business owner.  I own a small business I bought 6 years ago.  I have capable people in place running the day to day and we have achieved growth each year , with last year being our best year and this year strongly trending up.    But now as a business owner I have some decisions to make. Do we shut down, suspend?, what about my employees?, what about my employee wages.

Selling Buying Running a Business in a Pandemic

I started my 1st business 34 years ago.  I had been working with a Fortune 100 company.  It had used to be working for a large company meant secure paychecks, stability, benefits and all that goes along with it.   I guess you could say a certain comfort.  But I also would witness the occasional Friday when a Managers office door would close and a long time employee leave the office despondent.  He was being let go.   I decided I didn’t want to be that person.   Started a business, bought 8 other related business and 20 years later sold that business.  I really learned the significance to individuals on the absolute importance surrounding buying and selling a business. I decided to become a business broker.

Here I am today responsible for the decision on what happens to my employees.  But where the rubber hits the road is the question-  Would I rather be responsible for these very difficult decisions or have someone make those very important decisions for me?

Is now a good time to buy or sell a business? 

Buying or selling a business is so very dependent of financing.  The banking/ financing situation is very fluid right now and how the Stimulus package affects available financing to business buyers will have a significant effect. 

I don’t know your situation.  Are you thinking about buying a business?  One suggestion I have is asking yourself these questions:

Do  you want to be the person making the tough decisions regarding your employees, your business or…

Would you rather have someone else make those decisions for you .  The answer is different for all of us.

I would rather not have to make these decisions and just go back to the way things were- but we have some work to do first.

Scott Messinger is a Professional Business Broker working with business sellers and Business Buyers in Anderson South Carolina, Greenville, the Upstate South Carolina, Florida, the USA, and internationally. For further infomation email at Scott@GatewayBusinessAdvisors.com