#230 Sell On The Way Up: How Smart Owners Exit at Peak Value

I focus on helping people get the maximum market value for their business when they're ready to go versus they die, they go bankrupt, they have a dispute with their partner. Somebody asked me a couple days ago, what can I do? And my answer to them was, always have your business ready to sell.

Welcome to the High Voltage Business Builders Podcast, a show where we interview high voltage entrepreneurs growing and scaling through e-commerce, real estate, and other wealth without Wall Street ventures, showing you the path to making your first or next million. Every business owner will exit eventually. The only question is whether you'll do it at peak value or because you have no choice. In this episode, we break down what your business is really worth, how valuation multiples actually work, and why operational readiness can dramatically impact your exit price. Our guest is Marvin Karlo, a lower-middle-market M&A advisor and investment banker at Raincatcher. Where he helps business owners sell their companies through structured competitive processes designed to maximize value. If you own a business, wanna sell one, or you're thinking about buying one, this conversation will help you approach the process with clarity and confidence. We got blasted with snow earlier and we're just north of you guys and it hit way above us big, but we got a little bit where we are. And, you know, you guys don't always get snow in, in Texas, but when you do, it, it causes a lot of problems.

It causes a lot of problems. Yeah. Yeah.

Well, we're not here to talk about snow unless you're a weatherman. Last time I checked, you're not a weatherman.

I am not a weatherman.

What are you, Marvin?

Uh, when people ask, I say that I'm an investment banker that specializes in the lower middle market, helping business owners sell their companies when they're ready.

Okay. So you're a recovering investment banker.

I'm a recovering investment banker. Yes, sir.

And, and what is it, for those who may understand the term but don't necessarily understand the role, what is an investment banker?

Yeah, so it's a broad umbrella term. Um, what we do specifically is probably better characterized as we're M&A, so mergers and acquisitions advisors. And then within that, um, you can either help people buy companies or you can help people sell companies. And we really focus on helping small business owners sell their business.

Yeah.

When that time in their trajectory comes.

Yeah. As you know, this is another thing I love, as we talked about in our, in our pre-call, because we do work for, you know, businesses in businesses and support businesses with the goal of getting them to a, um, maximum level of exit. Right? What can they do to maximize my world in the e-commerce of physical products and private label brand building? Others might be in HVAC and, you know, other trades or manufacturing or literally all across the board, right? Could be a salon owner or, you know, somebody like that, right?

Well, yeah, one of the things I say is, look, every business owner is going to exit their business eventually.

That is true. You either do it voluntarily with all the glory and hope you had, or you have one of the 7 reasons why businesses normally exit. You want to go, go through that list? I know you know it.

No, because they're all very sad except for the one that I focus on, which is helping people get the maximum market value for their business when they're ready to go versus they die, they go bankrupt, they have a dispute with their partner, like all the other things.

The divorce or challenges or age out when they can't really work the business anymore. And so they have to take whatever they can get out of it. So there, that usually is more of the reactionary side of a business owner's outcome. How do they be proactive and avoid that reaction that so many fall into?

So, you know, I think the first thing is be sort of ruthlessly intellectually honest with yourself.

Yeah.

Like I talk to business owners all the time whose primary reason for selling is I'm burned out. Well, you didn't just wake up yesterday burned out. Like that was a process that you went through. So, you know, do that. Be honest with yourself about your age, about your health, about your family situation, about your interests and, you know, and how those are evolving over time. And you do want to spend more time with the grandkids or, it's not really about timing the market. I get that question all the time too. Like, is this a good time to sell? Well, anytime is a good time to sell. It's—

When it's for the right reasons. Yeah.

Right. When it's for the right reasons. Yeah. So somebody asked me a couple days ago, you know, what can I do? And What I, my answer to them was always have your business ready to sell.

Yeah.

Right. Yeah. It's kind of like your house. You know, my wife is maybe a little bit OCD, but, but, you know, if you visit our house on almost any given day, it's sort of show ready. I don't know why it hasn't been on the market in 10 years, but that's just how she keeps it. Right.

That tells me you don't have small children in your house anymore.

We don't, but even when we did, believe it or not, But, you know, yeah, my wife is very similar.

We have the 4 girls and they're here all the time with homeschooling, but they also have all the chores to keep the house, you know, correct. No, show ready, if you will, or visitor ready. That's just a thing that she loves to have. And it's a great thing she does.

Well, Neil, so that's a perfect analogy, right? So you have a business, you have employees, you know, maybe you do your own books, maybe somebody else does them, you know, whatever, whatever. But Be in a position where by the 3rd business day after the end of the month, your books can be closed, at least soft closed, right?

Yeah, exactly.

Be on top of your AR.

Yeah.

You know, be on top of your vendors, you know, make sure you're doing annual performance reviews with your employees. You know, just sort of all the things that go into running a business well.

Your house in order.

Do those things because, you know, what a business is worth lives in a range, right? The driver of what most businesses are worth is what's their, you know, their EBITDA, their earnings before interest, tax, depreciation, and amortization, right?

Right.

Or the other way to think about it for small business owners is it's going to be some multiple of the total cash that you extract from the business on an annual basis.

Seller discretionary earnings.

SDE. Exactly right. So, You know, but that number gets multiplied by some factor that's between X and Y. So it's 2 and 5, or it's 3 and 6, or it's 10 and 13, or whatever it is, right? That range depends on a variety of factors that you really can't influence.

Those are financial hard numbers, right?

Size of your business, the vertical that you're in, et cetera, et cetera. You know what the market is today. You mentioned HVAC companies. 10 years ago, you could get 3 times for an HVAC company. Today, people are getting 13 times.

Yeah. The demand has changed.

All right. It's sort of supply and demand, but you don't really control that. What you do control is whether you're a 3 or a 6. Yep.

That is right. That's right.

And that goes into a lot how you're running your business. You know, do you have a team in place that can run it without you? Are your financials tight? Is your margin optimized? All of these things, none of those things, if you don't have them, don't, can't be overcome. So that's sort of the flip side. Buyers aren't necessarily looking for a perfect business because your sort of warts and hair are their opportunity to improve value. But how are they improving value? Well, they're solving those problems, which is moving them up in the multiple, right? In addition to improving their margin. So it's kind of the game. There's 2 factors. There's what's your profit, what's your EBITDA, and then how attractive is your business from an operational perspective that moves you around in that multiple? So what's easier, signing up 50% more business or tweaking 7 different things in your business so your multiple goes from 3 to 4.5? It has the same effect.

Yeah, those are more soft though. Those are where you, those are where experience comes in and says, you know, should I look at how that business is going to be And if I become part of that business operation, if I'm acquiring it, am I going to be buying a job? If I'm selling it, if I hand— am I handing somebody a job in the soft benefits of the business? You know, because again, what we're talking about is 2 levels for people's knowledge here. We're talking about the financial availability, the market conditions, what that will be priced at in the market based on its niche, its, you know, its potential, its seller discretionary earnings, or its EBITDA. Those are numbers that come out in the accounting and they, they basically tell the picture of the business one way or another. What they don't tell you is what it's going to take for you to run that business. That's the soft aspect. So what are some of the other things people should be considering if they're both in the sale position? How do I make sure that that looks good for somebody? And maybe they're in the buyer position. How do I look for trouble to avoid in those soft benefits that I can't really see from a lack of experience?

Perfect. So, you know, number one thing for every business, is to have your books in order, have your financials in order. You know, you're obviously your P&L, but also your balance sheet, you know, whether you're cash accounting, accrual accounting. And if you don't know, if that sounds like Greek to you, then hire someone. You know, the best money you're going to spend on an outsourced service provider in your business is someone in the accounting field to keep your books tight.

Right.

Inside of that, you know, all of, all of us who are small business owners, many of us who are small business owners run some amount of personal expense through the company, either for convenience or, you know, not quite convenience. But look, it happens. It's not the kiss of death. Just make sure that your financials tie to your tax returns. Someone's going to go look. Right? So the next thing that, so when you get into due diligence, that's what a buyer does. And so you asked about buyers. The first thing you should do as a buyer is you should get the financials out of QuickBooks or whatever system they're using. You should get a set of bank statements and credit card statements if they use credit cards, and you should get a set of tax returns. And then you or whoever it is that's overseeing the financial due diligence for you, Goes through all of that and makes sure it all ties out. Like if you said that your revenue was a million dollars, I better be able to find a million dollars in the same period in your bank statements. Like the money had to come in. So that's the first thing. The next thing is team, right? If the business is too dependent on you as the owner, then I as the buyer am buying a job right now. Some people want to buy a job because they believe they can work themselves out of a job, and that's part of the attractiveness of buying the business. Buying systems.

Yeah.

That's going to lower your multiple. I'm not going to pay you 5x in a 3 to 6 range for a business. If I'm buying a job, I'm going to buy, pay you 3. I'm going to work myself out of a job and then I'm going to sell it for 5, right? So not being dependent on you. And the litmus test for me is, can you go on vacation for not a week, not 2 weeks? Can you leave for a month?

Right.

If you can leave for a month, then your business is not super dependent on you.

That's really hard to do, right? I mean, I know a lot of people think it's great, you know, and what is leaving for a month for some business owners? If we've been in it long enough in the game, we're still gonna check email and be on text messages. That's—

No, right.

But checking out for like the rest of the day is, is part of the benefit factor of controlling a business that doesn't need every action and every piece of the minutia to be in your control, your decision-making, but you can check in or be available. Management by exception is the, is the phrase, right? Where, you know, if you need me, I'll be here, but otherwise I expect things to keep going, right?

Correct.

If there's a major problem you can't fix, you can call me. But for the most of the time, I'm not gonna be sitting at my desk waiting for you or, or answering questions or driving something. That's really hard for small business owners to do. What makes the difference in, per someone's experience, education, background, et cetera, that gets them from that point A to point B, the month off, With just text conversations and making sure things go. And A, the person who's literally at their desk every day, 7 days a week, who realizes they can't turn it off. Ready to escape your grind? We help entrepreneurs build real wealth with private label brands. Visit voltage dm.com to start now.

Part of it is personality. Like some people are just wired that way, right? But I also think it's having a process. So the, the one that we always used it, you know, Most people have heard of. The book is called Traction. It's the entrepreneur operating system. There's no magic about it. Yes, it's based on the 13 Rockefeller Habits and, you know, whatever, whatever. But, you know, there's another book called Scaling Up, which is consistently following the process. So pick one that sort of fits your eye that you like, enjoy the book. If you don't feel confident that you can execute it, there are plenty of consultants out there that will come in and help you. Sort of set up the processes and the procedures and, you know, the meeting cadence and all of that. But whatever it is, you just have to follow a process that gets you work out of working in your business and onto working on your business. And when you're no longer working in your business, then you really can take that month off.

When it comes down to the, okay, there's a phrase that came into my head while I'm listening to you, but there's the Um, you know, slow hire, fire fast methodology. And I think a lot of business owners at this point may be hearing this and going, okay, I, I don't want to hire somebody. I hired somebody and it failed. I feel like I'm gullible in that. I don't know about hiring a W-2 person and paying for payroll and taxes. And that's a big expense. I don't know if I can handle that, which they should know in their numbers, if they know their numbers.

Right.

Or, you know, who do I trust in the consultant world? And how do I, you know, agency-based my business? These are concerns small business owners have when it comes to trusting the next step. Creating that handoff. It really is one of the biggest factors I see small business owners failing in, um, because they can go and, and do most of the other things they know to get done. But really when it comes to that build phase in the business that has to reach, um, an optimization component, the only way that's gonna happen and, and turn into any kind of growth or scale is when they start delegating those tasks.

Right.

So where, where do you, you know, tell people how to fit that gap, how to make that decision, how to, Do the right process by bringing in the right people. If they've got a business going, that's ultimately what's failing in the business, isn't it?

Many times. Yeah. Many times it's having the right people on board in the right seat doing the right thing. You know, other times it's processes and procedures, which is kind of that third piece. Sure. So from have your financials tight, know your KPIs, have your team solid, and then, you know, make sure that everybody knows what to do.

That one's actually on top of the next problem because if you have those things, it's easier to hand off to somebody. Right. And I think a lot of people look at that reversed. They get it Right.

And everybody thinks, oh, that means I've got to sit down for, you know, 500 hours and write all this stuff.

A bunch of standard procedure things. I don't even know what it means.

Right. Yeah. I mean, the days of the, you know, 3-ring binders on the shelf with all the procedures in them.

Yeah.

My answer to your question is, you know, the first thing I would do as a business owner is get involved in some sort of a peer mentorship group, whether it's Vistage or YPO or C12 or ProVisors or whatever. Get with other people who have the same problems as you. Being a business owner is lonely, right? So get with other lonely people and have a conversation once a month. I know it sounds crazy that you're going to take 4 or 8 hours once a month and go sit with 8 to 12 other business owners.

Right.

And like air your dirty laundry. But so the first thing is you're now, you've got friends, right? 2, you've got other people who are solving the same problems as you, and they know the answer to that question. Like, hey, this firm is really good at sourcing and hiring talent in your industry. Sit down with them.

Yeah.

Okay. You suck at hiring. That's fine. Write your job description. Hand it off to someone, have them source candidates for you, have them do the first level of vetting, have them do whatever, right? And yeah, I think the other thing is business owners are terrified to make mistakes.

Yeah, they are because they've made enough of them already, right? Some of them putting them on the edge of the precipice of going out of business. Yeah.

So I think as small business owners, we kind of get into this mindset of we, You know, we have to do everything ourselves either because there's nobody else to do it or nobody will do it as well as we'll do it. Or, you know, one of those clichés and you're just going to stay the same size. I mean, your business is never going to get any bigger than what will fit in your head if you approach it that way.

Yeah.

And so just like you wouldn't, I mean, if you break your arm, you're not going to like set the bone yourself and cast it. You're going to go to an expert.

Okay.

Right.

Yeah.

Bring in the experts in your business. I forgot who it was that says it. Maybe it's Jim Collins in Good to Great or something like that. But, you know, the CEO should only do the things that only the CEO can do.

Yeah. In the right seat, in the right bus, and the right person.

That's right. There's other things as a business owner that only you can do.

Legendary. That's literally what it gets down to. You're familiar with Objectives and Key Results?

Yes.

OKRs. You want to speak to that just a little bit? It's something we've used personally. I've used to kind of help build controls within our teams. I still need to get better at it. Who doesn't, right? And execute it a little more strong. But in terms of like SOPs and processes, I think that might be something if you're aware of it, we can talk to people about today because I think that's one of the simpler ways for them to kind of figure out how to fit those roles.

Yeah, absolutely. You know, I think That's a great system. Again, I spend less time, you know, I don't have religion about the system, right? I have religion about having religion, right? So have a system. If OKRs make sense to you, if it works for your business, great. That's awesome. But at the end of the day, what are they really saying, right?

Yeah.

You can't manage what you don't measure, right?

That's right.

So decide what it is that you want to measure. I'm sorry, decide what it is that you want to manage, right? What is the objective that, what are the top 3, you know, the business absolutely will not move forward if we don't achieve these 1, 2, 3 things. Those are your objectives, right? And how are we going to measure progress against those objectives?

Yeah.

Right. Those are your key results.

Yeah, those are great. And those could be relatively simple because you should, as a business owner, understand what levers are currently moving your business. And what you're doing to impact those levers.

And right, if they're complicated, then maybe no one in your business, including you, is really going to understand.

It really understands what's going on. And they are really, at the end of the day, I mean, you know, in the e-com world or in the HVAC world, if you're, if you're slinging product or you're slinging services, at the end of the day, it has to be time and people management or material management, go-to-market or go-to-service, sign up at the door, how you treat the customer, how you handle the customer when they buy the product, how you handle the customer, or when the service is delivered. Exactly right. Products or service businesses across the board have 2 slightly different variations of the same objective and key results. And then the business at the end, it's all profit and loss statements.

However, that's exactly right.

The business or service executes, right? So what that means is that those of you who are feeling alone in this process, those of you who don't know how to take the next step, those of you who are wondering, you know, am I the first one to deal with this? Am I the only one that can do it? I don't know what to do next. There are a lot of other people in products and services, which makes up all the businesses that have already done it. So, yeah, that's an island to yourself basically.

Right. Yeah. It always cracks me up when I talk to someone and they say, you know, oh, my business is unique. Like all those things that work for all the other business owners won't work for me because somehow my business is unique. Really? You have something other than revenue.

Yeah. You have something other than profit. You have something other than expenses.

Other than expenses.

It doesn't matter which platform you sell on. If it's online, it doesn't matter which service or truck you roll. At the end of the day, you're taking in cash, you're taking, you're expensing things, you're managing your finances, you're paying taxes. Like you're dealing with all of these same things at the end of the day.

Yeah. Oh, so, so you're special. So you're the one business on the planet that can pay more for something than they sell it for and still make a profit.

But there, there are, you know, people will argue, and it's true, there are uniqueness to the brand. Let's talk about that for a second because that's where the value of the exit actually will expand in terms of people's willingness to pay 6x for a business that maybe could be sold for 5x. It's going to be the brand. It's above the numbers. It's in the value. Let's cover that for a second. Right.

That's exactly right. It is in the value. So where you live in that range has to do with a lot of factors that, you know, you can sort of define and, you know, measure and manage. And then it will have to do with, to some extent, just timing, like the, in your business, right? So the people who had brands on Amazon Who sold to one of these aggregators in the early 2000s and just hit, you know, they were the right size, they were the right space, they were the right whatever, and just hit it right. Okay, great. You know, they got an outsized result, but you know, and it's easy to look at that and go, oh, well, I missed the window. Okay.

Well, yeah, maybe, maybe not. I know a couple people who actually bought their brands back from the aggregators after they crashed.

No, that's, you know, they're gonna— No, that's exactly right. But my point is, you know, you just, those are the outliers.

That's right.

The 99% are going to live, you know, where all the rest of us live.

Yeah.

And, you know, getting the maximum value. So there's another piece in my mind to getting maximum value for your business, right? So there's all the things you asked the question, what can I do before I sell? Right? So, There's all the things that you can do that really net out to run your business in the best possible way every single day until the day that you sell. Okay. But what happens sort of leading up to the day that you sell? So, and that's where kind of what we do, I think, comes in as investment bankers. We help companies package up who they are and what they are into a set of marketing materials that allow a buyer to, you know, quickly and thoroughly understand the, you know, the asset, the business, the operation that they're considering acquiring, right? And one of the things that I think that's key about what we do that many lower middle market business brokers don't do is we run an auction. That's what we call it. It's a little different than sort of an, you know, the auction at your kid's school or whatever. But the key is we don't put a price tag on anything. We agree with you as the business owner, kind of the range of value that we think the market is going to assign to your business, but we let the market tell us. So we build a very complete set of marketing materials that are very thorough. They're anonymous in the beginning so that no one knows it's your business that's for sale. Tell there's an NDA, but we get in front of the buyer and we give them all this information and we say to them, you tell us what you believe the business is worth. If you were, you know, if you want to buy it, what would you offer us for it? And we get 10, 20, 30, 40, 50 offers for a business, just depending on how kind of desirable that business turns out to be. And the business owner begins to see what the market, where the market values his his or her business. And then there's a group of those that sort of live at the top, right? And for those people, we sit down, we get them into a management meeting with the business owner where they can ask deeper questions, kind of hear the origin story, all of the things. And then that translates into letters of intent. And we negotiate those letters of intent because it's not just a purchase price, it's terms, it's indemnifications. It's a, you know, it's a whole bunch of things.

Yeah.

That you kind of want to get right in that LOI. But what we see in that process is because it's competitive, right? Because every one of these buyers knows I'm not the only one, they're compelled to put their best foot forward because they want to buy this business and they know they've got to beat out everybody else that wants to buy this business. And so you see the valuation start to go up just in this way. It's very much like an auction. Hey, I really want that gold bracelet. I'm, you know, I'll bid $10,000 for it and, and I'll bid up, you know, I'll go higher than I started. And so we see valuations move up through the process, you know, 10, 20, 30, you know, I mean, there we had a deal recently where the initial bid and the final, you know, the final purchase price was double what the initial bid was.

There you go.

Right. So that's the power of this competitive auction versus just taking the first deal that comes across the transom, the first offer that comes across the transom.

Yeah.

Right.

Yeah.

And then, you know, then there's this whole process of getting from a signed letter of intent. So you go exclusive with the buyer when you sign a letter of intent, and then you go through the whole due diligence and purchase agreement process. And unfortunately, that is where most deals die.

Yeah, it is. Yeah. For us last year it was over 400 died in that process.

No, they die all the time. And so the other, I believe, you know, more significant value that an investment banker brings is doing, so we do, we try to do a full set of due diligence upfront. Like, well, we're getting to LOI, we're also doing the due diligence that a buyer is going to do. So that we've uncovered and disclosed any issues, right? And we've got all the documents already ready to go. So when the due diligence request list comes over from the buyer, we've already got it. Yeah. Yes. You're all under wraps.

Letter of intent is a big one. The first step to just understand that, you know, where you're going is the, is not the end of the sale. You're going through the due diligence to decide whether or not The sale will fail. And I think a lot of people forget that it isn't about whether or not this is going to complete. It's the process by which you determine where it's going to fail, where it's going to fail, and then you decide whether or not it's worth continuing forward. And I think people get that backwards. I hope they hear what I'm saying because they really get it backwards.

Everybody involved in due diligence is trying to kill the deal.

Yeah, that's the whole point. You find the holes.

The attorneys are trying to kill the deal. The accountants are trying to kill the deal.

Do it now. Do it now. You don't want to buy a broken down car with an oil leak you didn't find.

That's it. That, that at least not, at least you don't want to do it unknowingly.

Well, you decide at that point, would I be willing to get the car fixed with the leak? Am I willing to tolerate that pain to get to the goods?

Exactly.

If the problem becomes I bought the business and then I found out I have an oil leak that cost an extra $1,000 and I'm like, what?

That's, no, that, yeah, that's a great analogy.

The emotions out of it. Go through the intent, go through the process, go through the due diligence, put it in your head already that this is going to fail. I know that sounds hard for people to expect because they're like, well, I thought you were an optimist. Like I thought, you know, everything was in abundance. And it's like, yeah, everything's in abundance until it's not. And if it doesn't have abundant opportunity beyond any of the existing failures, doesn't mean they're not there.

Yeah.

Then you just decide that it's not worth pursuing and you walk on to the next deal. And the thing about that is if you're the buyer, it's very different than when you're the seller. How do you position that understanding as a seller? You go in the reverse. I'm providing everything you need to disqualify my business.

Correct.

Right? Everything you need to disqualify my business. Why? Because I don't want the wrong buyer. If I put blood, sweat, tears, if I started this thing on credit cards and risk, if I put my whole life on the line to make this thing go, the last thing I want to do is have someone buy it who's literally going to destroy the 2, 3, 5, 10 years I spent building this thing. into its opportunity. I want to see it go bigger and better and maybe I want to come along with it. Maybe I just want to let it go, but I don't want to see it destroyed. Right.

And even if you believe, even if you have the mindset that you, once you get your check, you don't care, here's something to keep in mind. Almost all of these deals are going to involve you keeping some sort of skin in the game as the seller going forward, either in the form of a seller note or rolled equity. So you really do care about the buyer.

You will.

And oh, by the way, the wrong buyer is far more likely to bail 60 days into the process than the right buyer.

Right.

Now I will say, you know, one of the, another advantage of the process that we run is we almost always have a backup or 2 LOI. So I would say 30% of the time we end up with the backup LOI.

Yeah. So guys, if you're listening to this, really you need to be thinking, there's a lot of things we covered today, but I'm going to send them over to raincatcher.com with you to go check out what you're doing, Marvin. Because I think if you guys have listened to this today and you're on one side or the other of this conversation, if you're on the seller or buyer side, hopefully you heard something today that triggered your brain and says, well, I need to know more about that. One thing you'll hopefully have gained from this, and Marvin's bringing a lot of knowledge to the table, it is a risk either way. So if you're going to take a risk either way, make sure you're doing it eyes wide open. Make sure you're letting the time go through. Do not get attached if you're a seller to every buyer that wants to buy. Don't get your hopium in your brain and all your Lambo dreams up and caught up in the business. Stay practical because it will most likely fail 100 times before you find the right buyer you're willing to sell to, or it makes it all the way through, you know, past LOI and past due diligence and you're deciding your pain points, right? Or if you're on the sell side, reverse that the other direction. Get yourself under control, right? Making sure you understand what you're doing, what the process is. It's going to take time. Okay? Due diligence is literally a 90-day period, usually up to 6 months. And as Marvin had astutely said, either way, buyer or seller, it could be 6 to 12 months. It could be 2 years depending upon how it's financed, the seller note, how the financing comes to the table, whether you've got SBA involved or private equity. However that deal is going to get done, you're going to have to walk through that process and make sure you understand what you're doing because you're most likely not out of it for at least a year.

You're most likely not out of it.

Nope. It all sounds really good, but you're most likely not out of it on either side for at least a year. And don't go this alone. Go into communities. You know, e-commerce on this side of your voltage is one way to understand the intricacies of that model. If you're on pretty much anywhere else plus e-com, Marvin's a great guy to talk to if you're at the process level of selling your business and wonder, you know, understand where to go. Or if you're on the buyer side and you're like, okay, what am I missing? Definitely, you know, check it out and see what he's doing over there. Get that due diligence, talk with people, camaraderie, understanding, learning experience, the processes. It's very important you don't go these kinds of things alone. No one does this alone at the end of the day. Not well anyways. Not well. No, very well. People try. Yeah.

And it usually doesn't Doesn't go well. So Neil, a couple of things for your listeners. First, you'll put my email address and link, Raincatcher link in the show notes, I hope.

And on the screen for everybody at YouTube.

First, that's the first thing. The second thing is if you reach out to me, my response will include a scheduling link and I'm happy to get on the phone for 30 minutes with anybody, whether you're on the buy side, the sell side, the Just wonder what the heck this is all about side.

Thank you for offering that. Our time is very valuable.

Happy to chat. If you're a business owner, your number one question is almost certainly, what's my business worth? We're happy to, on a complimentary basis for your listeners, Neil, put together a high-level business valuation for you. And the output of that'll be either, wow, if I can get that, I'm ready to go today. Or, Yeah, I've got a little bit of work to do, right? And then we can connect you with partners that can help you get that work done. And then you come back in a year or 2 or 3 or 5 or whatever, ready to sell. And then if you're just kind of getting into this, you know, I've owned multiple businesses, several in the e-commerce space, and I'm just happy to chat with people about the journey. I told Neil, you know, before the call, you know, at the end of the day, For me, this is about paying it forward. We were super blessed with the businesses that we owned and the exits that we had. And I'm just passionate about other people, you know, being able to take the same journey and have the same kind of success.

So, well, and you have the experience to back it up. And so I'm honored you came on the call to share that information with everybody. We're not done talking because we've got a lot more to do in the coming year. 2026 is going to be a fun year. I think there's going to be a lot of businesses who are going to see some serious growth. And are going to want to know what to do. And my final statement, maybe you'll echo it, and I'd like to hear yours, is always sell on the way up. If at all possible, always sell on the way up.

Neil, thank you. That one statement, more than any other, makes my job easier. It is so much easier to sell a business that's doing better than last year than the other way around.

No, don't get told, don't fall into that fallacy that if I hang onto it for a few more years, I'll make more money. If you're at the peak of a question that the answer is, I probably should sell my business, you need to follow through with that.

Yeah.

Follow through on it on the way up. Find out what you can do and where it's at. Don't get caught up in the idea that you can magically control the future. You've done well in the past, but do not get into the idea that you can control the future on your own. That's just a, that is a naive statement I hear so many times. Business owners are like, well, why wouldn't I hold my business? Why would I sell it? You know, because you don't understand economics. You don't understand the macro and micro aspect. You wouldn't ask that question if you did. You'd be going, okay, I'm on way up. I see my projections. I know how much faster I can go if I'm not going it alone anymore. And the answer would be, I need to sell my business and I want to see it become fruitful, not on the way down for the 7 reasons why people usually crash out of business, which are never good and they're always reactionary. And that becomes desperate and desperation makes bad decisions. And usually that will always not end up favoring you. It will favor a jackal who sees You know, you, you down and the sharks in the water, we call 'em, right? They'll smell that blood and they will take advantage of you. So don't be one of those people.

100%.

Any other thoughts you wanna end this on?

No, I don't think I could have summarized it any better than that. Sell on the way up. And, you know, pigs get fat, hogs get slaughtered. So.

That's a better ending here from Texas. You know all about that down there. Arvin, thanks for your time, brother.

Thank you, Neil.

Ask you this. If you're serious about building an e-commerce business starting on Amazon FBA, what if myself and my team worked with you one-on-one? To execute the steps outlined in the podcast while helping you discover what the heck to sell, how to make sure it's profitable, and how to successfully launch a brand. Plus, how to do it under a consulting plus performance-driven model where I put a $10,000 skin-in-the-game guarantee for those that show up and are serious about building a real business done with us. If yes, text keyword profit to +1-417-413-4209. That's 1-417-413-4209. 413-4209, and I will personally respond with a few simple questions. If you're not in the US or Canada, please visit voltage dm dot com. That's voltage dm dot com. Click get started and book a no-pressure discovery call with me or a member of my team to learn more about the business builders one-on-one coaching and mentoring for CEOs, entrepreneurs, and those looking to build an empire or retire using the power of e-commerce. Once again, thank you for listening, and be sure to tune in next week. for a brand new episode of the High Voltage Business Builders Podcast.