Why AEC Firms Built to Sell Are Just Better Firms—Even If You Never Sell

Yeah, a lot of the courses that I've bought are that style. There's much smaller chunks and so they can always add to that topically something that we talked about with the AEC Advisors team a few weeks back. So that episode will have been maybe two episodes before this one goes live. Trying to do the math in my.

Head, we're in the future.

Yes, that's right, the future. So we were talking about how one of the big challenges with M and A when, when a firm goes to buy somebody else is when this smaller firm that they're about to purchase, like all the content is like in the owner's or the principal's head. If there's not another person or another way to get at that. I'm just seeing how incredibly valuable this would be for, for a smaller firm or a firm, not even necessarily a small firm, but a firm that's in the market to be sold to have a way to have socialized all that data and to, you know, it. It's not just stuck in somebody's head or on, you know, one proposal that we did three years ago.

Yeah, I mean, I think there's a, there's a book and I forgot the author's name, but maybe we can look it up and add in the show notes or something called Built to Sell. And the premise of the book is whether you're selling your business or not, you should build it as if you were because it's going to put you into good behavior. Like what you just said, you know, like if you're a buyer, think about how much more valuable it is to buy a business where all of their procedures and their knowledge is all organized and documented. Like it's much more clear what they're buying. If you're buying the one like you talked about, it's like you're just, you're crossing your fingers and it's, you're just hoping for the best. Right. And. But the thing that's so great about the way that book is, is meant, is like, but if you don't plan on selling, that's still a better business to run anyway, but one that's organized and has all the knowledge accessible and easy to find and you have a good knowledge management culture. So either way, if you get really organized and manage your knowledge well, you're a much more valuable potential acquisition target. But if you have no intention of selling, it's just a better place to work. And oftentimes actually we should say selling might be to the next generation of owners or, you know, coming, coming internal sale. So like you're also making a better asset for your next generation to buy into, one that's organized and it's clear and it's a good, well oiled knowledge machine. So it will just make your business more valuable regardless of what your end game is, I would say.