The Wise Exit

Mike Finger highlights the three elements all small business owners should focus on when building a company for a future M&A exit:
  • Are your business results desirable?  Will an acquirer see value and opportunity in what you have built?
  • Can a buyer duplicate your results?  Can the buyer run the business without you?
  • Can you document your results?  Is there a playbook written that can be followed once you are gone?


GUEST BIO:
Mike Finger is a serial entrepreneur and business advisor who's built and sold four companies.

His first exit was not for the faint of heart and provided expensive lessons for the rest of his entrepreneurial career. Mike built his first company to 50 people, and after ten years of growth, he decided to sell. However, after several attempts to work out deals with multiple buyers, Mike's investment bank told him that his business was just not in a position to sell.

Although this is something any decent investment bank or M&A Advisor should know before taking a company on as a client, Mike spent the next four years fixing the mistakes in his business and eventually sold the company.

Resigned to not letting other small business owners go through his pain, today, Mike shares with us how to position small businesses for successful exits at Exit Oasis.

We hope you enjoy the conversation with Mike Finger.


WHERE TO FIND MIKE FINGER:
LinkedIn

What is The Wise Exit?

The Wise Exit is an open dialogue with fellow founders and former business owners sharing real stories and offering honest advice around selling their companies to some of the top acquirers in the world.

Beyond the entertaining and educational exit stories, host and M&A Advisor, Todd Sullivan is here to help demystify the Mergers & Acquisitions (M&A) process. For example:

- How much is my business worth?
- What is Net Working Capital?
- When should I get a Quality of Earnings analysis
- Should I hire an Investment Banker, M&A Advisor, or Business Broker?
- When do I talk to my Key Employees about a possible transaction?

We hope you enjoy... and learn a few things along the way!

https://exitwise.com/

Mike Finger - Episode 65 | CASHING OUT M&A PODCAST

00:00:00:15 - 00:00:17:10
Mike Finger
Are your results desirable? Can a buyer duplicate your results? And can you document your results? Give me three strong yeses to those questions and we start to break the mold in terms of the number of businesses that fail to sell.

00:00:18:04 - 00:00:39:08
Todd Sullivan
Welcome to the Cashing Out podcast, where our fellow founders share real stories and offer honest advice around selling their companies to some of the top acquirers in the world. My name is Todd Sullivan, CEO of Exitwise, where we help business owners create the exits they deserve. Today, my guest is Mike Finger, an entrepreneur and business advisor who's built and sold four companies.

00:00:39:18 - 00:01:00:01
Todd Sullivan
His first exit was not for the faint of heart and provided expensive lessons for the rest of his entrepreneurial career. Mike built his first company to 50 people, and after ten years of growth, he decided to sell. However, after several attempts to work out deals with multiple buyers, Mike's investment bank told him that his business was just not sellable.

00:01:00:16 - 00:01:23:18
Todd Sullivan
Although this is something any decent investment bank should know before taking a company on as a client. Mike spent the next four years fixing the mistakes in his business and eventually sold. The company resigned to not letting other small business owners go through his pain. Today, Mike shares with us how to position small businesses for successful exits. I hope you enjoyed my conversation with Mike Finger.

00:01:26:11 - 00:01:55:20
Todd Sullivan
Mike, thank you so much for being here. I've been very excited to chat with you. Not only have you been an entrepreneur with multiple exits under your belt, but I think you've used all of that experience to start educating our fellow founders and business owners to create truly excitable businesses. And I know we tend to play in a little bit of different realm of the size of businesses that we work with, but a lot of our audience is running businesses that are under that $10 million mark.

00:01:55:20 - 00:02:12:10
Todd Sullivan
We tend to work with businesses that are 20 million of revenue and up. So it's great to have you on. I am very excited to get your advice for everyone. And in fact, Mark Cuban had this spot and when I found out we could book you, I immediately bumped him. So thank you for being here.

00:02:14:18 - 00:02:22:02
Mike Finger
I love that. It's not the first time it's happened to he and I. So, Todd, thank you. It's a pleasure to be here.

00:02:22:19 - 00:02:32:16
Todd Sullivan
So what? I love is I love to hear kind of the entrepreneurial story. Like, where did you start getting into your first business? Maybe we could just start with that, that background.

00:02:33:02 - 00:03:04:20
Mike Finger
Yeah. Yeah. The quick version. mid-Nineties, my wife and I started our first business, cut our dining room table in half to make two desks and started serving clients out of our living room. Turned out I was a bit of a growth junkie, so added clients started adding staff and hit my vein. Right now it just growth was the thing for me and I found myself ten years in 50 full time employees and woke up one morning and looked in the mirror and found a crispy pieces toast.

00:03:04:21 - 00:03:24:16
Mike Finger
Looking back, I realized that I had jokingly been talking about scheduling in my heart attack, and it wasn't funny. It was a ringing true. So I thought, Excellent, it's time I'm going to go ahead and sell my business. And that's when I had my first two by four to the forehead moment of What do you mean? I can't sell my business?

00:03:25:02 - 00:04:00:12
Mike Finger
But I had done my homework. I thought I understood, you know, the rules of thumb for my industry. Two times revenue. This, that and the other. And the brutal truth for me is that I hadn't built a business that I could sell. It was a massive personal and professional pivot for me, but also shined a light for me on not just what I had experienced, but the truth is, it's it's what most small business owners experience when they come to this sell the business space.

00:04:01:00 - 00:04:28:13
Mike Finger
And so I dove in. I committed myself to making changes in the business that would allow me to exit. And five years later, we sold those businesses successfully. So it was a brutal journey. Again, I have since learned that it's one that most owners walk. Most owners who experience the seller business space experience it by doing this time they wait and then they fail.

00:04:28:17 - 00:04:31:05
Mike Finger
That's how most owners experience the exit.

00:04:31:10 - 00:04:35:08
Todd Sullivan
I appreciate you sharing that. Can I just ask one question? That industry, where you in?

00:04:35:18 - 00:04:47:21
Mike Finger
We owned a business that was called an association management company. We provided back office support, accounting, technical and leadership services to nonprofits and associations.

00:04:48:07 - 00:05:05:08
Todd Sullivan
That's great. Well, I appreciate you giving us the background. Building a company to 50 employees is no small feat. Can you walk me through why was the business not ultimately? Well, ultimately, you did sell the business, but why was it not transferable the first time you tried?

00:05:06:01 - 00:05:40:09
Mike Finger
Not enough cash flow to owner dependent hadn't built a leadership team. I mean, if you and I were to do a quick Google on, you know, what are the basics that keep a business from selling, I it's like I had a checklist ahead of time and was trying to do everything wrong. So, yeah, for me, it was a fundamental misconception about why a buyer buys a business and what an owner can and should do to create sell ability into their business.

00:05:41:08 - 00:06:04:01
Todd Sullivan
So yeah, I love to dig in to some really actionable things, but in a very obviously the cash flow in the business, right when we're looking at helping owner sell it very much is that profit ability that you know, you're getting a multiple of that profitability. And so building that in and being conscious, I mean, you got 50 employees, I don't know if they're 1090 nines or full time employees, but that has got to be a significant burden.

00:06:04:13 - 00:06:12:01
Todd Sullivan
And where you running the business really to serve as the lifestyle for you and your wife? Is that what the majority of the profits where they went?

00:06:12:09 - 00:06:37:21
Mike Finger
I mean, no, that's the simple answer to that question. I did what so many owners do, and I'll give you the line. Right. We've made a lot of profit in this business, but we've reinvested it back into the business. The problem was, is I didn't really understand what the definition of profit is, right? Profit survives. The bottom line makes it to your tax return, and that's profit.

00:06:37:22 - 00:06:55:05
Mike Finger
I would get September and see some money on my bottom line and then find a whole bunch of things, usually in pursuit of more growth that I would spend money on. And so each year I would get to the end and somehow magically make my cash flow disappear.

00:06:55:12 - 00:07:20:00
Todd Sullivan
That's super interesting. I kind of understand the urge to say, Hey, we've got some money to spend here, let's pour it into marketing, let's pour it into head count and let's grow, grow, grow. If that was, that was your mantra. You could get caught each year. And and it's not only being profitable in that last year, right? You want to show consistent profitability over time and even growth in that profitability to be a truly transferrable business.

00:07:20:11 - 00:07:31:01
Todd Sullivan
I think I heard this maybe I misheard, but it sounded like when you ultimately exited, you you said exits. So did you have to split the company up in some way?

00:07:31:14 - 00:08:00:11
Mike Finger
Well, we actually when we started the business, we were growing one operation, then started a sister company and and grew those. They had a similar backbone. Separate entities sold those businesses and then they have subsequently bought and sold to others. So I had the opportunity to prove to myself that what happened the first time through wasn't a fluke and have really worked that process to try to understand what I got wrong.

00:08:00:11 - 00:08:21:14
Mike Finger
Because again, Todd, it's I think there's a lot of owners out there that think they've done their homework. I had read articles I thought I had done my time. I thought I understood. And for me it was as simple as the article that says two times revenue. Okay. Well, what's the number I have to pay attention to then?

00:08:21:15 - 00:08:36:22
Mike Finger
We have to pay attention to revenue. Well, that's all well and good, but if you're not making any money, your revenue is meaningless. And so it's, you know, it's finding the way to understand this journey we're on as owners from a buyer's perspective.

00:08:37:15 - 00:09:11:03
Todd Sullivan
Yeah, you know, gosh, there's so much here, Mike. What I would say is and I don't love our podcast to be a commercial for X, it was, but we have built a valuation calculator and that valuation calculator really helps businesses from, you know, as enterprise value of $1,000,000 up to 500 million. And what I think it does remarkably well is it not only allows you to put in your cash flows, but it identifies maybe 30 factors, operational factors, external factors that affect the value of your business.

00:09:11:11 - 00:09:35:16
Todd Sullivan
And when you can see, oh, the strength of my management team is really not high enough for my industry or the size of my business, or I have way too much customer concentration or my customer churn is too high and you see how that you watch it in real time, how that affects the value. What I love about the calculator isn't so much the number that it spits out your business is worth X really is.

00:09:35:16 - 00:09:57:18
Todd Sullivan
It creates a game plan of how to increase that enterprise value. And you've mentioned a couple of things already, obviously cash flows, but that ownership structure is too dependent on on you when you hand that business to somebody else, you have to think of it as if I'm staying in the shoes of the buyer. Am I handing them future cash flows because that's what they are.

00:09:57:18 - 00:10:22:04
Todd Sullivan
In fact, buying? I just want to touch on one other thing is the failure rate. And so we know in the lower middle market that 20 million enterprise value up to 500 million, the failure rate for those companies is like 70% when they go to market. And a whole host of reasons. And when I had heard that as a business owner, I felt like that in the industry is just not servicing the business owner well.

00:10:22:04 - 00:10:45:14
Todd Sullivan
And we had to go in and learn how to change that. And I think we are certainly contributing to a higher success rate by surrounding business owners with really like the A-Team of M&A every time. But there's certainly other factors and that's really what I want to get into with you is what were those other factors that you saw and now you routinely see with clients?

00:10:45:18 - 00:10:52:03
Todd Sullivan
What are the things that are causing problems that are not allowing them to sell businesses? And what are we doing to change that today?

00:10:52:03 - 00:11:20:13
Mike Finger
That's a great question. I appreciate the asking. This is where the difference in markets, I think gets sticky. You talked about 30 items for folks that use your tool to help them understand better the valuation, the sell ability of the business. Those are critical. And the challenge is, though, that they tend to be increasingly critical as the operation size gets larger.

00:11:20:13 - 00:11:53:16
Mike Finger
Right. If we're in a 20, 30, $40 million business, we've got an awful lot of factors to look at. The problem is, is that I think too many small business owners consume content that talks about brand value or intellectual property or or these very real component pieces of value for larger companies. And they get fixated on something that just simply doesn't apply to them until they get the basics in order.

00:11:53:16 - 00:12:21:10
Mike Finger
And so for me, an entering this process, it was really a journey of whittling. I started and I said, okay, let's let's look at everything that's used. When we look at the value of a business and let's try to separate from important too critical for the true small business owner, right? For the 97% that are out there. And I landed on three simple questions.

00:12:22:11 - 00:13:04:21
Mike Finger
Are your results desirable? Can a buyer duplicate your results and can you document your results? If you can answer yes to those three questions as a genuinely small business owner, the desirability and the sell ability of your business has increased dramatically. If you can't, let's not worry about any of the other stuff until we can answer yes to those three questions because I can't tell you how many times I've had conversations with owners who are telling me about their brand and their Facebook activity and their this and their that, and they're not making any money.

00:13:05:13 - 00:13:15:00
Mike Finger
And so I don't care about the other stuff until you've got those basics dialed in. If you're a small business owner interested in selling the business.

00:13:16:15 - 00:13:19:19
Todd Sullivan
Can you repeat those three elements that you talked about earlier?

00:13:20:14 - 00:13:48:15
Mike Finger
Are your results desirable and no trick there? Are you creating desirable financial results? And is the owner's job attractive? Right. Are your results desirable? Can a buyer duplicate your results? And can you document your results? Give me three strong yeses to those questions and we start to break the mold in terms of the number of businesses that fail to sell.

00:13:50:08 - 00:14:13:17
Todd Sullivan
Yeah, thank you for repeating it. I was really number one. Are your results desirable what you meant by that? Because, you know, I think that there's context, right? That a business owner has to have that business may serve you from a lifestyle perspective, but when somebody's coming in to look at buying a business, there are a number of options out there, right?

00:14:13:17 - 00:14:36:16
Todd Sullivan
So right. Is that business truly desirable in the context of all the other opportunities that that buyer or set of buyers may have? So just because it serves your needs may not indicate that it's going to serve others. And then your number two, can the buyer duplicate that? Right. They obviously want to duplicate those desirable results. Yeah. Do you have financial and do.

00:14:36:16 - 00:14:48:23
Mike Finger
I have systems? Is it is it structural? Is that what creates the results or is it that Todd happens to be a great sales guy and he he makes all the sales and then when Todd is gone, now what do we do?

00:14:49:11 - 00:15:08:00
Todd Sullivan
They're gone, right? Well, they're all my buddies, right, that are buying from me. And. And when you're gone, you're the business goes away. The documentation is really important. We have that on our valuation calculator. Really. It's like financial documentation, like the how you record financials. Are you doing that on a quarterly basis? Do you have the right cadence?

00:15:08:06 - 00:15:35:00
Todd Sullivan
Is an accountant really looking at that. So but that that documentation goes far beyond that right. Employment agreements how the business is actually set up insurance, all of those things that would go into a data room, right when you're going to go sell a business. And I think, you know, I've been guilty of that, right. In the businesses that I've built is you kind of say, I'll get to that, I'll get to that down the road, and then it gets harder to to fix at a later date.

00:15:35:07 - 00:15:52:22
Todd Sullivan
And when somebody comes knocking on the door, hey, I'd be interested in buying that business. If you're not prepared to say yes, come and take a look at how not only how transferable the business is, how it's structurally set up, but here's the documentation behind it. Your buyers are going to walk. So yeah, I think those are kind of great.

00:15:52:22 - 00:16:06:15
Todd Sullivan
Three great buckets. Where do you see kind of the biggest deficiency today? I know you say look at my brand, look at the audience that we attract, but we don't make any money. Is that really the biggest problem that small businesses are facing?

00:16:07:05 - 00:16:42:00
Mike Finger
The biggest problem in this space is that owners ignore this topic until it's too late. DELAY The lack of intention around this topic is unquestionably the biggest challenge because you can't change it if you're not giving it attention. Right. And for most owners, they think I'll get my business ready to sell when I'm ready to sell it. And the truth of the matter is, is, as you already alluded to, is that this can be a two, three, four or five year process.

00:16:42:06 - 00:17:07:07
Mike Finger
I mean, if I've been aggressively tax planning to zero on my bottom line and a buyer's going to look for a three year track record of profitability, that's at least a three year journey, you know, to build that track record. And so the problem is, is that we wait, we think this is going to be a quiet, thoughtfully considered plan, fully executed process.

00:17:07:19 - 00:17:30:06
Mike Finger
And for so many owners, it's not it sneaks up on them. They suddenly find themselves in a place where I want to sell because I want to get out or I want to sell because I've got another opportunity or, you know, the terrible DS divorce, disability, da da da da. Right? It's these things that come along and force this subject to be front and center for an owner.

00:17:32:18 - 00:17:53:19
Mike Finger
We just tod we and I say we because this is where I was with my first business. We we look at this topic as it's as if it's something that comes later and we forget about the truth. That own ability and sell ability are the same thing, right? We talk about financial reports. Hey, a buyer likes that. Well, guess what?

00:17:53:19 - 00:18:09:23
Mike Finger
Financial reports are also really good at doing. They're really good at informing you and helping you run your business in a better way, right? Yes. Hey, I get to look at photos. I get to see that. So it say we wait, we wait and then we fail. That's the biggest problem in this space.

00:18:11:12 - 00:18:39:02
Todd Sullivan
One thing I want to comment on is we see a lot of business owners that, for lack of a better phrase, use the business as their personal piggy banks. Right? So they really are managing the business from a tax perspective to zero. And that to us that is fine. If you have substantial scale, you have growth rate and you can show profitability because what we use is adjusted EBITDA.

00:18:39:10 - 00:19:01:17
Todd Sullivan
So just because you have your niece on the payroll and she doesn't actually work there or you're funding a home projects and travel, all of those things, they can be adjusted out. And most of the buyers in the lower middle market understand there to some extent there is that in every business. So I don't want to scare business owners away from, you know, like live the life that you want to live if you if your business can afford it.

00:19:02:11 - 00:19:23:06
Todd Sullivan
On the flip side of that, you're absolutely right that you really have to be able to document really true profitability and growth within that profitability. And three years, the way you said it is really kind of an ideal snapshot to be able to take because the buyer is buying year four or five six and they want to see the trends going in the right direction.

00:19:23:12 - 00:19:30:03
Todd Sullivan
But I just I want people to not be afraid of putting some things right in through the business.

00:19:30:12 - 00:19:57:12
Mike Finger
100% right. But there's an informed way to do it. And then there's that hair on fire way that that many owners do it. And to your point in terms of documentation in the small business world that sellers discretionary earnings that we're talking about, add back right. Okay. If you can show me the add back, if if it's trackable, fabulous if you're just taken toilet paper from the office.

00:19:57:12 - 00:20:14:11
Mike Finger
So you don't have to buy it at home, don't expect the ad back. Right. I mean, it's just there's a way to do this in a way that's thoughtful and intentional and you can benefit it. Again, if we don't think about it, if we don't spend time on it, it it doesn't happen.

00:20:16:01 - 00:20:24:04
Todd Sullivan
So in your case, you took four years, right, until you had that transaction or did you fix it in four years and transact a year later?

00:20:24:14 - 00:20:37:09
Mike Finger
Yeah, it's probably similar to the to the last. We started fixing it right away, but of course then we had to get a good year under our belt and then get another good year under our belt and continue to to move that number forward.

00:20:38:17 - 00:20:50:01
Todd Sullivan
And so when you did decide, okay, we are prepared, the business is transferable, you went to market and were you using any professional help or were you going to be the business broker on your own business? How did you.

00:20:50:21 - 00:21:16:14
Mike Finger
Use the broker for the exit? And okay, we could talk for an hour about the good and bad of that rep, but I ended up at the closing table and I walked away with with the check. And so I that was a huge win. It was it was such a freakin life changer. I can't I can't say. I mean, again, keep in mind, I was burnt out.

00:21:16:14 - 00:21:42:07
Mike Finger
I didn't want to be doing this anymore. And to be able to see the life do over that a successful exit represents in that situation. And I've been lucky enough to see it happen to many, many other owners. And I think that too many times owners don't understand. And the good that can come from spending a little time and energy in this topic area.

00:21:42:17 - 00:21:45:09
Mike Finger
But for me, it was a it was a freakin miracle.

00:21:47:12 - 00:22:13:07
Todd Sullivan
I love to hear you say that because, you know, you read a little bit about this topic and the regret that business owners have when they actually do sell, I think is largely misguided. And I think that what it really is, is they should be thankful. This is a very, very difficult process. They've beaten all the odds to get to have built a business that created, you know, wealth for themselves and their families.

00:22:13:12 - 00:22:33:10
Todd Sullivan
And then to be able to transfer that and have an exit is just a remarkable feat. But I think what drives some of the regret, which you don't seem to have, is that they don't have a plan of what their life is or who they are. POST-TRANSACTION Are they going to go out and buy another business? Are they going to retire and play golf or something?

00:22:33:10 - 00:23:02:02
Todd Sullivan
You know, something in between? B Board member on multiple companies giving back to the entrepreneurial community. What we have found is business owners who plan that out can see their life post exit that more gratitude and pleasure that they have having gone through the M&A transaction and they're not thinking, did I leave money on the table? I know in my cases I definitely left money on the table and I regret that and want to, you know, want the do overs.

00:23:02:02 - 00:23:12:20
Todd Sullivan
But the do over is go do the next business, educate yourself. And now for me, it's, you know, educating others, which it sounds like you're doing. And that's it's incredibly rewarding work. I know you would agree with that.

00:23:13:12 - 00:23:36:09
Mike Finger
Absolutely. Hugely. So I have a lot of contact with my my owners post-sale and you know, six months out to have the owner tell me I feel in this right now and then to add but I remember when we talked about this and that this was coming right this point of have I made a mistake? Okay. What what what what do we do ahead of time?

00:23:36:09 - 00:23:48:20
Mike Finger
Well, first of all, we re I don't know that there's ever an owner that's not going to have moments of that. And. Okay, well, let's talk about that ahead of time and let's so that prep that it makes a massive difference.

00:23:49:14 - 00:24:07:18
Todd Sullivan
Yeah, I absolutely agree. So when you got through your exit, it's life changing. How long did it take? It sounds like you started it maybe didn't start other business. Did you buy other businesses you knew what you were looking for. Now, having gone through this process because you went through some entrepreneurial evolution here, that.

00:24:07:22 - 00:24:30:10
Mike Finger
Was a higher less. I played with a startup for a while, got to the point where I had to write the big check and no, that wasn't. I actually went to work as a business broker for about a year. I loved part of that, hated part of that. I went and ran a an incubator startup in my region helping startup and growth companies start up and grow faster.

00:24:30:21 - 00:24:56:11
Mike Finger
Missed the bug of ownership. Then went back and bought and sold to turnarounds and then landed in the space where I am now. Which because again, what I found is that I love the transaction space, I love the exit space and I carry ownership pretty heavy. I'm the guy that when I own the place, I'm a I'm awake at 2 a.m., right?

00:24:56:11 - 00:25:14:13
Mike Finger
I'm staring at the ceiling, thinking through problem X, Y, and Z, and that gets old. I know there's different ways to do it, but I haven't found that. And so what this has allowed me to do is to work with owners, be in that space, but be able to fall asleep at night.

00:25:15:05 - 00:25:36:06
Todd Sullivan
Mike, I don't want to take all day here, but buying the companies and then it sounds like you are turning them around and then getting them ready for sale, you know? Were you lucky? Were you were you really good? You knew what you were doing to me that that there are a lot of kind of aspiring entrepreneurs via acquisition.

00:25:36:18 - 00:25:40:14
Todd Sullivan
Yeah. Any advice along that for that for anyone going on that journey?

00:25:40:23 - 00:26:03:06
Mike Finger
Sure. I was lucky. I think I knew what I was doing, what I have landed on. The best advice for for aspiring folks in that space is to fall in love with the search, fall in love with looking for a business. And if you love that process and do it long enough, you just might land on something that's a good fit for you.

00:26:03:18 - 00:26:26:08
Mike Finger
Ultimately, what I was looking for is something that was broken in a way that I knew how to fix because I think that's where the value equation changes. But that's a pretty freaky. I mean, that year as a broker put me in a position where I was able to evaluate opportunities in a different way and with a different level of confidence.

00:26:27:01 - 00:26:48:20
Mike Finger
And so again, it's it's a messy space. The stories are great, the shrapnel is everywhere. And yeah, again, for me the advice is fall in love with the search. Fall in love with looking at opportunities and evaluating until you find something that is the right fit for you. Might not. It might be a horrible fit for someone else.

00:26:48:20 - 00:26:50:03
Mike Finger
But yeah.

00:26:50:03 - 00:27:06:13
Todd Sullivan
I think that's great advice. We have a lot of friends that are searchers or independent sponsors, right? And they're always on the hunt. And the hunt is not the thing that they necessarily love, right? They want to get the deal. They've got a time clock on them. So they got to transact within, you know, a two year period.

00:27:06:13 - 00:27:26:01
Todd Sullivan
It just puts a ton of pressure on them. And like you were also in that position to see lots of opportunities because we are we are essentially the advisor on transactions and you get to see things that go with a little bit of grease here, a little bit of oil there. This thing could be a rocket ship and those are fun, fun business to see.

00:27:26:01 - 00:27:42:22
Todd Sullivan
And you talk to the owners about it. Could you do this or is this something that we share with potential buyers of really where they're going, how they're going to take it to the next level? And we love those discussions, but yeah, the visibility into those opportunities is is fun and we love that search. Mike, this is awesome.

00:27:43:04 - 00:27:58:17
Todd Sullivan
Is there anything else that you would share with our audience about, you know, about your experience? Any advice? Because it really feels like you've lived on kind of both sides of the table or three sides of the table, really, right? The seller, the buyer and the broker. Any other words of wisdom?

00:28:00:07 - 00:28:23:15
Mike Finger
I'm a I'm a terribly pragmatic guy. Todd So my advice to small business owners in this space is really simple. Set aside a lunch period a month, put it in your calendar, set a date with your future self every month, and spend time in this topic area. Listen to a podcast like Exit wise, read an article, look on YouTube.

00:28:24:05 - 00:28:46:09
Mike Finger
Continue to educate yourself around what it looks like to create a business that somebody wants to buy and then do it the next month and the next month. And as time goes by, you're going to find that you start to operate your business incrementally differently. And over time, the impact of that incremental change is massive then. So just start now.

00:28:46:09 - 00:28:51:11
Mike Finger
Start simple. A lunch period a month. Pay attention to this topic.

00:28:53:02 - 00:28:56:11
Todd Sullivan
Mike. That's perfect. Thank you so much for your time. I really appreciate it.

00:28:56:17 - 00:28:57:10
Mike Finger
My pleasure.

00:28:58:21 - 00:29:21:00
Todd Sullivan
Thanks again for listening to the Cashing Out podcast. For more founder exit stories, please subscribe to the Cashing Out podcast on Apple, iTunes, Spotify, or wherever you listen to your favorite podcasts. And please remember exercise dot com and the Cashing Out podcast are for entertainment purposes only. This should not be relied upon as the basis for investment decisions.