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Thinking about selling your company someday? Most founders wait until it’s too late to prepare their business for a clean, valuable exit.
In this episode, I chat with Niraj Shah, M&A Advisor and 5x Founder, about what really makes a company exit-ready. We dig into mindset traps, deal-killers, and the simple actions you can take right now to set up your business for maximum value, whether you sell this year or ten years from now.
🔍 What we cover:
- Why “exit readiness” starts years before you sell
- The biggest founder blind spots during M&A
- How to identify red flags buyers will uncover
- The emotional side of letting go
🔗 Resources & Guest Links:
Creators and Guests
Host
What is Beyond 8 Figures?
At Beyond 8 Figures, we believe in DELIBERATE entrepreneurship. It means creating a solid foundational framework for your entrepreneurial journey, building from a place of passion, and intentionally aligning your actions with your goals so that you can create success on your terms.
Join A.J. Lawrence, the journeyman entrepreneur with several 7 figure exits, as he shares honest conversations with successful entrepreneurs about their experiences starting and scaling businesses to $10M and beyond, the realities of being a modern-day entrepreneur, advice for practicing deliberate entrepreneurship, and more!
[Intro]
A.J. Lawrence:
Hey everyone, welcome back. We have a really fun episode, one that's taken more than a few months to put together. It's a good friend of mine that I've known for a few years now out of the Baby Bathwater. Today we're going to really be diving into how you can grow your business support for selling, but also just what that means and how just the pursuit thereof is going to help you grow a better business. We'll probably dive into a little bit about skiing and definitely about cocktails throughout. So I warn everyone ahead of time. I would like to introduce you to Niraj Shah, who has a really great consulting practice where he is helping other businesses grow. But as I said, I've known him for years. So thank you so much for coming on finally. And I know it's in the evening for you. It's not quite tea time, but probably close. Thank you so much for coming on the show today.
Niraj Shah:
Thanks, A.J. and as I've heard a few times, it's always five o' clock somewhere.
A.J. Lawrence:
Yes, always somewhere. Read about your background more than a few times, and you and I have kind of talked over cocktails. Actually, you and I bonded over the fact that there were no Amaros at an event. Right there, it was a friendship built on booze. But almost every group I've seen you at one point or another be talking and knowing everyone by name. You are the consummate networker. You just have this ability that I think is really special and unique. From the real estate to different things, you've done stuff with Mac who's been on the show a couple of times, how did you kind of come to this? Let's talk about how you had this progression.
Niraj Shah:
Appreciate all of that. And I think the Amaro story is such a funny one because the way we met was you were asking at this bar in the middle of nowhere, Texas, at an event what Amaros are here. Turned this way, I said, there's no Amaros here, but you and I are going to be friends. So that was where it all started. In terms of a bit of background, the ability to build relationships, I'm not sure where that comes from, but I'm very curious about humans, particularly entrepreneurs. Like, I'm very, very interested in business intellectually, like, as well as my own experiences. Long story short is that I had a corporate career for a while and that was going reasonably well. But I got to the point where I'd disillusioned with what I was doing and decided I needed to get out and start my own thing. I just got to 30 at that point and I wanted to start my own business since I was 15 or 16. I'm Indian by background. We're very entrepreneurial. We didn't have this in the family, but for me I thought, this is how I'm going to make a lot of money and have my freedom. So kind of naive to think that as a teenager, but also kind of true in hindsight. So I started working on, you know, figuring out what, what that's going to be and how I'm going to do that. And then in the middle of that process, I, out of nowhere, I had a full blown stroke, which was like the weirdest thing ever. Just because there's no like family history or reasons. I was very lucky to recover. Like there's definitely dumb luck involved as there is with any type of brain injury. But also there was a lot of resilience as well. Like just deciding that I'm gonna get better. And it changed the way that I see time, freedom, consciousness, everything. After recovering from that, I eventually started my own business after a couple of false starts. That first business was in real estate and that really started getting somewhere. The stroke was 2010, 15 years ago, first business got up and running about 18 months later, two years later. So I've been in this space for 13 years now, coming up to 14. And over that time I've founded or co-founded five different businesses out for a few years. I started writing angel checks, 10k here, 20k there. And it turned out that these folks needed a lot more than an angel check. So I started helping them out and that's how I stumbled into advisory. Took a while for the penny to drop and realize that I should be getting compensated for this as well. But I've ended up investing in or advising over 50 businesses and I think all of that has given me a really broad exposure to so many different things. And then this particular business, the M&A business, that was born out of anger and frustration. As you know, I spent a year and a half trying to acquire a business because I'd never done that before. My plan was buy an interesting business and grow that out. And came close three times. A third of those fell over in December. Just gone. And by this point I'd already been helping a few people out with exits and stuff like that. Matt Mack, who you mentioned is a dear friend and business partner, we'd done a bunch of stuff together. So I'd kind of been dabbling on the M&A side, helping people to sell. Anyway, when the third acquisition fell through in December, I just decided to go all in on becoming a sell side advisor. And that was born out of seeing opportunity, I'll talk about that in a moment, but also anger. Because the brokers I'd been dealing with, I just felt that they had scuppered those deals and not done a good job for their clients and I could lay the blame at their feet. There was an element of I think I can do this better. But also as a founder, it felt so disrespectful to me that they could treat somebody's life's work in such a transactional manner and just not even just do a good job. So that was where this came from. But also I recognized a number of things that I thought I could do differently. Whilst fundamentally it's the same thing, like the process of selling a company is the same set of things, but there were several elements that I thought the deck was stacked against founders and nobody's really telling them about it. Not the buyers, not the intermediaries. So that that was part of it. And yeah, here we are. That's kind of what's brought me here. But I think I've been around every side of the M&A table as a seller, investor advisor and a buyer. And that gives me quite a unique view of this beyond somebody who stumbled into it through the investment banking side or someone who's maybe done one deal in one industry and is now coming in.
A.J. Lawrence:
How you kind of came to make so much sense. So let's do one of my favorite things and throw brokers into a pit. What are some of the things you see that brokers are doing that disservices their clients?
Niraj Shah:
Yeah. So I'll caveat this first and say there's some really good brokers, bankers, intermediaries, advisors, whatever you want to call them. The person who helps a business owner sell, there's some really good ones out there, but the majority that I've come across at the lower mid market, so sub $100 million revenue, it's too small for investment banks so this is the space that's dominated by everything from brokers to boutique investment banks to boutique advisors. It's a real wild west. So some of the stuff that I've seen, gosh, where do I start? I think a whole bunch of it is just like not doing the job properly. Like it really does come down to that. You know, basically sending out a few emails, hoping something lands at the smaller level, listing something on a website, hoping somebody calls, and then a few months later saying to the client, hey, I'm sorry, I tried to sell it but it hasn't. But you know, the unspoken bit is, but we're okay because we got your listing fee or we got your retainer fees. So that's probably the main one. And give you an example, like true things that I've seen when I was on the buy side, it would be things like asking for something as simple as a cash flow statement. Small, small deals, waiting a week and a half to receive that and then being sent the wrong document, not being allowed to talk to the seller. And we're sitting here thinking we're a willing buyer, they're a willing seller, we're all getting along well. But because of the broker's insistence of sitting on this and their slowness in doing things. So that's one. Another one is, I've come across this a lot since I've been on the sell side. People come to me when they've run a process, it hasn't really worked out. And we start digging into what's happened and I asked them, send me your advisory agreement, let me see what it says. And it's things like highly inflated retainer fees where the firm is taking significant margin on those retainers so that they don't care what happens afterwards. I personally have got a problem with taking margin on retainers. I think they're really important, we can get into that. But the way we do it, we don't make money on retainers. We make money when we get a result. The retainers are there to cover cost and to ring fence time and attention. Ridiculous minimum fee expectations that basically put into the seller's mind that they can achieve this incredible result which makes no sense to win the business. And then, you know, nothing much happens. And the only party that knew this upfront is the intermediaries. I've seen firms 10,000 a month retainers sold the dream. And then it's a junior associate who's doing some of the outreach. They're sending a generic email.
A.J. Lawrence:
Every consulting one form or the other.
Niraj Shah:
Yeah, yeah, this is a real example like this. This company should trade at 25 million. The only interest they got was what they'd gathered themselves from some of the, you know, the most recognizable names on the planet. The broker banked 10k fees and it was somebody with two years of working experience who's doing the outreach and they were sending the same generic email. Is it any wonder that they didn't get anywhere?
A.J. Lawrence:
It's interesting because I'm going through a deal right now. A few things have happened that remind me of some of the conversations you and I have had about what you're trying to do here. Going even a little further into the point where I'm under LOI and what I've noticed in one and two, he hasn't prepared his client through a few things. One expectation range, the understanding of like what it meant for the different types of buyers and how they would kind of come into the deal. You and I had discussed this before. They had this one expectation that because they were asking this price, even if their underlying financials didn't support what they said it did, it was still going to stay at the same price. And it was just like didn't you talk to them about what this means and how this impacts and all that? Depending on the sophistication of the seller, you know, dealing with very, very intelligent sellers but not business legal experts. Thing that they seem not to have paid attention to in the LOI but have intellectual property non-competes stuff like this where it's like didn't you walk through what that means? And I remember you kind of talking about like making sure people understood what the process so not just getting your business ready because the cleaner and the more steady your business, the easier it is to sell. But just the understanding of what it meant to sell and what that process meant to them.
Niraj Shah:
My personal opinion, it's the intermediary's job to prepare their clients. So if the incentives are aligned, so in our case, for example, we don't make money unless the company sells. Then we're heavily incentivized to make sure that that entrepreneur is actually ready and that means mentally ready and understanding how this process might unfold and understanding how different factors might affect things and us actually knowing like, okay, what's the base case? What's the best case? What's an acceptable case? And is that realistic? I think this is good rule of thumb for anyone doing any type of consulting work. The way we think about it is if we don't believe the business is very, very sellable and we don't like the client, then we don't take on that work. Because one, we're going to be working for a long time. It's going to be six to nine months minimum. And two, if it's not salable and doesn't actually get there, we're just spinning our wheels. And that's big opportunity cost for us that we're not doing other things. Whereas if the broker is taking a big margin on the retainer, then they don't care.
A.J. Lawrence:
Let's take a step back and get kind of into the thought process that the listeners can kind of take from you, because I know you're doing this with your own business. As you kind of said, it's not just preparing one, getting them to understand the process and stuff, it's getting a business ready. The more efficient and you know, there's all these things you learn as you go into the process of buying. The more company is able to run, the more transferable it is. The more steady and predictable the revenue structure, the more clarity there is into the financial. You know, all these things make a company one, more sellable, but two, easier to run. As I've learned the hard way from not doing it with the last company I sold, yeah, over 10 years ago, I got lucky. But yeah, in the end it was like, wow. When I started listening to people like Mac, after of course I sold and things like that, I was like, dang it, I had a good business. I just wasn't doing the right stuff with it. Oh, it would have been so much more. Can you kind of walk through what you're doing and how you use that then with your clients? Not to put you under the build to sell process, but it is. You're doing a variation of building your company to sell it, even if you don't plan to sell it and then you use that with your clients?
Niraj Shah:
Correct. So I think this is what's exciting for me. This is like everything I've learned over the years, applying it, and then especially things I've learned from Mac because I work closely with him for a year and a half. With him as a CEO and me as a minority co founder. And I got to see under the hood of how he thinks and how he does things. That, plus all the other things I've learned and the mistakes I've made that would have changed some of the results that I've had. So the ironic part of it is that I have no. Like, I'm going to build this company for the next decade. This M&A advisory firm, minimum one decade. I have no intention to sell it, and they don't trade that often anyway. M&A firms do sell, but it's not common. However, I'm building it with the exit blueprint so that it is sellable for a different reason. And that reason is because in my opinion, that's the best lens to build a business with. So there's a few layers to this. Some stuff is reasonably obvious and some of it's not. So it's going back to something you and I have spoken about a couple of times. You can have a very profitable business that actually is unsalable. And that's something a lot of business owners don't actually understand. It's not that it will be hard to sell. It's actually impossible to buy. So at the basic level we've got, you know, is. Is the business profitable? It doesn't have to be profitable to get a good exit because some of these businesses have huge strategic value to others. We're working on a deal at the moment where the business does okay, but it has very valuable ip and it's going to exit based on on the value of the ip, which is multiples of what the value of the business would be without it. But profitable helps a lot. The other one, which I think is reasonably well known, is can it run without the owner? So my plan over a number of years is to not be the CEO of this business. Next two, three, four, five years, it will be me for sure. But the idea is to start building that structure so that there's a different managing director, I might have a different role, whether it's chairman or whether it's, you know, just doing elements of whatever.
A.J. Lawrence:
Drew current residence.
Niraj Shah:
Exactly. And then I'd say, yeah, so profitable does it wrong without the owner. And then the third one is, is it being built like an asset or is it the owner's piggy bank? Now, there's nothing wrong with it being the owner's piggy bank. We have a different business that is basically our piggy bank because that's our investment company. It's never going to like be sold. It's just a place to wrap assets into, et cetera, et cetera. But the thing is, if we did want to sell it one day, it would be impossible because the financials are so messy, because it's not being treated as an asset. So that's the basics, right? But then the next level after that is a true assessment of the assets and liabilities. What a business might think is an asset, a buyer might see as liability. A really easy example of that. Sign a multi year lease on some premises. That could be seen as great for the company, great for the culture, great for the team. But a buyer might look at that and say, well, we don't want that, why do we want that obligation? So that's a really simple one. Then we start getting into intangibles, so ip trade secrets, trademarks, processes. I think this is a massive missed opportunity from a lot of companies and it's not to say everyone should patent everything, but I think building a moat around the brand is actually quite important because that can become really valuable. And then another one that gets overlooked is like how ring fenced is your distribution. If you have exclusive distribution, that's massive. One of the AI startups I've invested in and I'm on the board of, they are basically building like AI sales agents. Now. There's a lot of people doing that, Lots of people. What these guys have done really well is that they've targeted regulated industries and they built traction on that. So they're jumping through a hurdle that's hard to jump through. And so they're creating moat around what they're doing and then that starts becoming valuable. In my opinion, distribution actually trumps product. Something I didn't really understand before, the sort of last layer of this is there are certain things that you can do three, four, five years before an exit that you cannot do one or two years before an exit. This is the same in the US and the uk. Like if you decide that you want to do some sort of employee scheme where they get to share in the business. Now loads of great cultural reasons to do that. It also happens to be highly, highly tax efficient for a seller. You do that too close to an exit. The IRS or HMRC will take one look at that and say you can't do that because you only did it to make your tax position better. Everything I've just described there forces to build a better business. Now in terms of what I'm doing, we're eight, nine months old at the time of recording this. August 2025. We've got so far so quickly because of the things I've learned. This is a bootstrapped, self funded thing. It doesn't take a lot of money to start something like this. But what I did, a really good example is people think their company is too small to have advisory boards from day one. I started with that. So Mac was my first phone call. He's the first advisor to the business, Robert Taylor, an investment banker I've known for a while in the us he was my second call. And you know, when I said, hey, do you think that there's room for something like this? And he laughed and he said, of course there is. I said, great, because you're going to be my partner. And this is why. So straight away, like huge level of experience already in the room beyond me. So it's, it's not, it's not about me, it's about what the existing team has already done. And then thinking about how we build this out, I already know what the next two or three hires look like and what the trajectory of that is and even like what the service lines are and, and how we make this a really sticky proposition that does a lot more than just makes fees for selling businesses gone through quite a lot there. So I'll pause there and let you reflect on that and ask questions how.
A.J. Lawrence:
The listeners can understand the type of businesses you're working with. So they can kind of say, oh, that's me, because you were talking about sometimes it's a lot earlier than they're thinking, sometimes even smaller than they were thinking and sometimes not even profitable. So let's kind of talk to your avatar and then let's then move from there to the type of questions that these business owners should be asking of you and in general to kind of decide on moving forward. So who do you find the best clients for you to work with right now?
Niraj Shah:
It's quite defined. So like as a company, the clients we work with, their company has to be based in the uk, USA or Canada, one of those three, it has to be north of a million revenue up to about a hundred. So I think the sweet spot for us is 2 to 30 because that's where the competition is particularly weak. But for example, as I mentioned, there's a deal we're working on now that if that trades, it will trade in the 50 to 100 million range and then sub 1 million. I'll look at it if there's some really like strong IP or something like that. But typically speaking, the economics just don't stack up. But I'll come back to that in a second. So number one, that, number two, the sort of size of the business, any sector that that's less important to us because of number three and number four, number three is we've got to believe that the business is salable. That depends on what it is, what it does, what market. The temperament of the owner is really important in that how they show up is really important because you can have an amazing business with someone who's just blows up every relationship that they, they work on. So you can't put them in front of buyers. That's all stuff that other people like. Competition of ours, they can take on that business. And then the fourth one is basically related to that which is we have to really like the people that we're going to be dealing with, the decision makers because we're going to be working together for at least six to nine months. That's the fastest that a sale process takes for, I mean it can happen faster but it can happen in four or five months. But it's rare because of, as you know, the process done properly. You're looking at a month to prepare things, at least a couple of months of outreach and vetting, et cetera, et cetera. That's the fastest you're going to get to an LOI and then there's 90 days due diligence typically with an LOI so that's already taking up to six months. So that's our profile. But there is a bigger picture which is that for me, like this was born from the anger of this unfriendly broken process that doesn't really favor business owners and sellers. And also understanding there's so much hidden value that entrepreneurs don't create and capture because they don't know. So a big part of what we're going to be doing going forward is producing content that any entrepreneur can read. Because we've come across bits of this content which is badly written, not well marketed. And then we found stuff that is well marketed, but it's like an inch deep. It's just really shallow stuff. So there's a lot of stuff like what would make me so happy? This has happened on previous businesses when somebody contacts me two years later and say, hey, we had an amazing result, we sold our business and we'd never heard of them, but it was because they'd consumed our content and just ran with it.
A.J. Lawrence:
What are some of these things that.
Niraj Shah:
They overlook in terms of what we do? One is, you know, run that sell side process to consult people. So we've got a couple of clients like that where they don't need us to run a process but they are in the middle of a sale or an acquisition and they just need our support, like an external council. Third one is running strategic reviews on the business. So that's all the stuff I was talking about before. We'll take a deep dive into somebody's business and just basically show them like here's all your opportunities to make this more robust, more salable, more valuable, increase enterprise value. And then the fourth one which I wanted to get to is our, the expert network that we're building, which is not a chargeable product but it's so important. We're starting to build out this network of M&A lawyers, CFOs, but even other M&A intermediaries. So for example, like we're starting to get to know it or even other people who do what we do. But like for example, I've come across one which is super credible and all they do is smaller e commerce deals like sub 2 million. So for us it's amazing like when we get people coming our way we'll be like, well look, that's not for us but we'll introduce you to these guys and go talk to them. Like bigger picture. That's how I'm thinking about it. It's not that easy to find really good M&A lawyers who do stuff in your jurisdiction, in your industry, at your sort of deal size, for example. But we're, we're getting to know a bunch your question about some of these things that people need to know about. I think the just really understanding what the M&A process is like how deals happen, how buyers think. So I've got a couple of books that I keep on my desk that you know, we can chuck in the show notes. But this one, the Messy Marketplace is fantastic. That's all about, you know, kind of like how the buyer market works and then this one Exit Strategy by Sherry Walling, she's a friend of mine, she's a psychologist too. So really big name entrepreneurs and her husband Rob sold a few companies. But what I like about that book is it goes a lot into the psychology. There is a whole mental side to this going back to something we were talking about before that sellers really need to be prepared to understand what's going to happen and that's the sort of transaction that's going to happen and then what's going to be running up here before, during, after those two books, there's a couple of more like that. They're not easy to find and they're not obvious, they're not, you know, sort of big name bestsellers, but they contain an absolute gold mine. I think the, the other stuff is how they should go about finding an intermediary, what they should look out for, what areas of deals could potentially trip them up, those sort of things.
A.J. Lawrence:
Having those gives you a really good advantage of understanding. And I've sold a few businesses and I joke I've made stupid unique mistakes each step of the way. From blindly selling at 24, just believing what I was told from a buying company that I'd be treated well, which of course I wasn't. And then yeah, selling way way under for something I founded with a friend who had a great developer, built some amazing software and I was just sort of the business face. But we sold way under. We got our 1 million check and thought we were cool. And then all of a sudden they turned around and sold it. Literally the Same software for 10 million. We're like, oops, we didn't really think this through. And then the last was just not preparing my company to sell. As people are looking at this and seeing the importance of understanding, what types of questions should they be asking an advisor like you to decide on how to go through this process?
Niraj Shah:
I think the first thing is just to see like how open someone's going to be like around what is the process? Like, how do you work, what do you do? Because if you're not getting a lot of substance, that's a red flag in itself. The best in this space are they're willing to have conversations provided that you're in the ballpark of what they'll deal with. So that's quite important. Just seeing how well you get along with that person is quite an important characteristic. Of course, things like track record matter, what have you done before? And asking blunt questions like why should we go with you over somebody else? Like absolutely, you should be speaking to two or three people as well. I think one of the superpowers, you know, you talked a little bit about the kind of relationships I have. But one of the rules I had from very early on with all types of consultants always have two or three. So on the real estate side I still do a lot of stuff, but I've got two or three different firms. One of them gets a majority but they're always all aware that the others are there. And A, it keeps everybody sharp, but B, it means you can triangulate opinions. So you know, like our Main firm has started getting quite expensive so we started moving stuff to another firm. They do just as good of a job but a few years earlier that firm got too busy, scaled too fast and couldn't really transact long way to labor. The point like don't go with the first person you speak with for any of these, get recommendations and then you know, key questions for me is like once we're doing this, what does accountability look like? What does transparency look like? How do I get hold of you? What's your method of outreach? There's a lot of like guffiness industry around. We have our proprietary methods, all this kind of stuff. But I think it's worth scratching under the surface of like well how are you going to go about this? Because nobody knows every buyer. There is something to be said for some industry specialists will know the landscape and they'll know how deals are done in those industries. But equally like I think it's very, very deal dependent. The overall meta on this is just don't be afraid to ask really basic questions. Two basic questions I ask every every potential client that we come across. The first is if they want to sell, then the first is why. Like we really dig into the why. What's driving this? I've advised more than a few people that they shouldn't sell. There's another way based on the reasons that they gave and they wouldn't be able to or unlikely to achieve the multiples that they thought they're going to get. And then I ask like the most basic question to everyone which is how do you make revenue? And you'll be surprised that the answer isn't always what you assume it's going to be. Like a good few of them have been like, oh well, 60% of our revenue comes from this thing that is the front end of our business. But like 20 is here and 20 is there and it's two things you had no idea they even did. So it's the same way with advisors that sound like basic questions but like how do you go about this and how are your incentives aligned with mine? Like a good advisor will be able to tell you a one who wants to pull the wool over your eyes will avoid that question.
A.J. Lawrence:
The realization that so many times it's just another person he pulls out of his hat. Oh yeah, you might want to talk to this person. When I talk to selling brokers, they're relying upon that mailing list of people who've raised their hand looking for deals or they're looking at a couple of different Promotional vehicles from really bad biz buy sell to the really more interesting and esoteric sites, their own mailing lists and stuff like that versus being able to generate interest through networking and situations. So many times I've spoken of people about things I'm doing that everything's abused and it's like, oh, that helped me. And then, well, I know someone who knows someone who they're looking for strategic. That is something that right there you see in the much higher end deal making but very rarely see in this. I know you were talking up to 20, but since I'm mostly in the sub 10, very rarely am I seeing people who are thinking in that way and activate that way.
Niraj Shah:
Yeah, and you going back to something else. I said the reason we're so selective about who will take on is because it like it has to be such a strong proposition that if you put that in front of a buyer, even if it's cold and if you've framed it the right way, the level we go to, it will be something like, hey, in your quarterly report or in this press conference or at this event, you said this, you said you want to do that. This particular company will help you achieve that. Without saying it in these words, you'd be crazy not to look at this. At least take a look, right? Any buyer who has the ability, like if they're thinking about acquiring, they will not ignore something like that. And it's not one random email sent to one person. We will look at their, like their C suite, their corporate development team will look at who we know who can make an intro. The thing I'm least concerned about in all of this is how we're going to reach the right people. If you have something good enough to show them that's relevant enough, they don't care where it's coming from. They don't care that they don't, they don't know you. All it's doing is surfacing the right opportunity as opposed to sending generic emails once and then wondering why nobody responded.
A.J. Lawrence:
I really agree. If you're listening to this and you're just kind of considering, think about the process. We've had some other guests, but just in looking at his structuring list, it's like he's coming at this from having been through multiple deals. You want to learn from someone who not only has had success but has had issues and difficulties, so therefore understands where the problems are ahead of time. He's gone through these processes. Yeah, you're focusing. And I like the uk, US and Canada. Yeah, it's so funny because they're different in the types of financial structures. Canada and UK very much are, you know, cash of more smaller on the smaller deal size, a smaller buyer market. Once you get past that 10, it's a very similar buyer market between us, Canada and the UK. It's just on the small side because we have the sba, which is an interesting thing that does make it easier to transact on the smaller side. But even then, if you're looking at this understanding, you need someone who understands how these countries and how you are going to stand into your market.
Niraj Shah:
There is a really important point here, like somebody can do this themselves as well. Like Mac is a mutual friend. He's sold several of his own companies. I've come across a few people who've run their own process and done it. It is something that somebody can do themselves. The analogy I'll use is it's like selling a house. If you have got the wherewithal and willingness to learn and certain skill sets, you don't need an intermediary to do this. Like I think that's important. And some of the smaller deal sizes, I'd say sub 1 million revenue, you're probably better off doing it yourself because you've got a structural problem. Anyone who's any good at this, they're not going to work on those deals because why would you do a deal that might pay you 50k to work on a sub 1 million deal when you can do the same thing at 10 times the size and it's the same process? I've come across some really good examples. There was a yoga studio owner in the US who got introduced to me and the business is probably worth about 350. Really nice business, lots of nice things. She sold it herself because she got self educated and she had a data rooM&All that. And I thought that was amazing. Another SaaS owner I know here who is worth about a million, she sold it herself. You don't need someone, but you need to make sure you've got the time and energy to put the work into this because it is a lot of work without the business suffering. So again, if you've built the business to a point where it can mostly run without you or completely run without you, then potentially somebody could look at it themselves. And the other thing that we do, which I'd alluded to, is we have and do consult people who are sort of doing this themselves, just with their outside counsel just being available for them. That's super interesting to me and it allows us to get exposure to smaller deals without ruining the economics and charging an arM&A leg. But they don't need us to run a process. They need a bit of advice on how to get a deal done. So all I'd say is that I don't come across a lot of people in my industry who do this, who say some version of you don't actually need me. But if you're, you know, if it's higher stakes and you don't have time and you want a really thorough process and you want somebody who's going to go out and bat for you and then the most important bit so a third party to negotiate for you because that's always really powerful. A good advisor will pay for themselves. If they don't, then there's a problem.
A.J. Lawrence:
Almost everything in life you can do yourself. I used to say with Google, but AI all the more. But having the feel and having the flow and the process, having someone who has experienced it and focuses on that. There's that point like you said, usually not under a million, but give or take, depends on the deal, the issues of your own company. But definitely as things get larger, that extra specialty of someone who really knows the space pays out. How can people find out more about you? Where should they go? Because you were talking about the content you created and all that.
Niraj Shah:
LinkedIn is great. So you can share my LinkedIn. I have a personal website, neerajs.com n I r a j s.com that's actually where I write about entrepreneurship, energy and freedom. So three very specific themes. Entrepreneurship as an engine towards freedom. Very much believe in that. Energy as a strategy. That's everything from physical fitness to how we carry ourselves and then true, true freedom through ownership and that's owning assets but also like taking responsibility. So yeah, there's a mailing list there. The way I see it, I'm actually pretty easy to find. So I would like people who want to find me come find me. And I don't want to be super visible beyond that.
A.J. Lawrence:
We will have in our show notes LinkedIn website some other fun things. I think I have a couple of pictures of him drinking cocktails in my photo lab. Well, throw some fun.
Niraj Shah:
You might have some of me running cocktail class as well.
A.J. Lawrence:
We'll also make sure it's in the mailing list and in our socials as this episode. So yeah, remember the big takeaway everyone is start before you think you need to start. Understand really why you're selling. Be able to have a deep hard conversation around that.
Niraj Shah:
Leave it with the last nugget on. This is really conversation I've had many, many times is some version of yeah, I think most people would sell if the right offer came in. Like everything has a number. So my view is if that crazy offer came in, would you be ready? And where you want to be is to be able to get somebody under NDA and then right click Send and it's your Dropbox or your data room or your Google Drive. And that posture is so powerful because it's like the confidence it will give a buyer that this is a really good asset because you're organized. But like for me there's nothing worse than a really good buyer coming to the table with enthusiasm. And the business is unsalable. You're not prepared. So if people think about the end game and don't think of that as like several years off, but let's start spending an hour a week on putting this stuff together like that can have a profound impact on the quality of your company today as well as creating that optionality in a future to sell or step back or whatever it is.
A.J. Lawrence:
I like that. You know, if you're in the process, definitely one of the people I would suggest you add to your list to have a conversation with as you're moving forward. Because Teligence smart. I know he's done some great deals having talked to people who've worked with him, but more importantly, he's just a good guy. I've spent many a late night in London wandering around with him. This would be well worth your time if you're going through this process. All right everyone, thank you so much for listening to today's episode. We'll have another episode coming out soon, so please subscribe to our newsletter. You'll be the first to know when this episode comes out and all about our future efforts. All right everyone, have a great day. Talk to you soon. Bye-bye.