Sell My Green Business

Employee ownership within the green industry is neither new nor unusual. Green industry companies are often owner-managed and there has often been a desire to make an ownership opportunity available to key employees, either to facilitate a business transition or to retain key employees. A number of leading companies within the industry are employee-owned and, [...]

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I recently read an article in the August issue of Landscape Management entitled Are You Ready to Sell? Ths [...]

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One of the things I ask business owners when we talk about selling their business is if they have website.  More often than not, they have one, occasionally an elaborate one with flash introductions and avotars.  More often, small green industry businesses have a minimalist one – more-or-less like a Yellow Pages ad.
 
Here are some [...]

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One of the most enlightening things you can do is to do your own due diligence examination of your own business. Using a checklist like the one in Exhibit A, do a check-up on your own business. Make sure you really can produce the information about your business that you think you can. Assemble [...]

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One tactic I recommend to small business owners is to establish your own board of directors. I don’t mean a formal, legally-constituted board of directors, I mean a group of business and professional advisors whose opinions you respect and whom you will really listen to. Your lawyer, accountant, and banker are candidates for your [...]

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There are many roadblocks that can slow a transaction – just when you are in a hurry to get it done. Among those that you can do something about now are delinquent tax returns or other regulatory filings, promises of equity participation that may have been made to key employees or others, other unresolved [...]

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It is very fortunate that most of the steps that will make your business more valuable to a potential purchaser will also make your business a stronger, more viable and profitable business under your ownership and management. They may just improve your business enough that you would not want to sell at all.
One sure [...]

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To a certain extent, the value drivers will depend on who the most likely buyers for your business are. Financial buyers, who plan to acquire and operate the existing business to produce a return will be interested in different facets of the business than a strategic buyer who plans to “tuck-in” the acquisition into [...]

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It is very common for small business owners to own the real estate from which their business operates. This is often a very good strategy and, for many, the decision to acquire real estate has resulted in a very good investment. Unfortunately, when the time comes to sell the business, real estate can add complexity [...]

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Another way to increase the value of your business is to identify ways to increase revenues from existing customers. That might include selective pricing adjustments which will not reduce the retention of existing customers. It might also involve increasing the number of services each customer receives – as long as the business remains competitive in [...]

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