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.
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
