[Don't go crazy buying additional businesses within the first year. Focus on one and create alternate revenue streams through add-ons and premium services. Aim to develop towards half a dozen baskets for your eggs.]
[No client should be more than 15% of revenue.]
Raise your prices. Add a three-tiered price structure (low, medium, high). Add discounts for up-front payment, annual plans, and institutional versus retail pricing.
[It's easier to sell more to existing customers than find new ones, so offer a menu of add-ons to increase your average revenue per job.]
[Use leads, conversion, jobs, and average revenue to calculate annual revenue, then annual expenses to calculate annual profits.]
Most small-business owners "live in their own wallet," meaning they won't charge any higher than what they would be willing to pay. That's dumb. Let rich people pay you lots of money if they want to. You'll be surprised how often they will.
[Lead with benefits, not features.]
[Output-based metrics measure numbers you don't directly control, such as traffic, signups, revenue, growth. Activity-based metrics track things you do to influence the other numbers, such as calls made, posts published, machines in operation.]
[Ask your potential leadership hire who they would bring from their past jobs: if there's nobody, they might not have been leading much.]
[Who probably knows the business better is the previous operator or owner. If they stay involved for the first 90 days, your new operator can: shadow them to document SOPs for month 1, work alongside them for month 2, and perform everything independantly with occasional checkins for month 3, all the while refining the Operator's Playbook as a living document.]
You are one good hire from cutting your problems in half. Two good hires from a completely different company.
[When the price is too high, a wince or verbal "How am I supposed to do that?" offers your no to the problem rather than the person.]
[Most job listings start as a love-letter to "whom it may concern".]
I'll invest in you as much as you're investing in yourself.
Whenever I can pay to steal someone's ten thousand hours, I do so.
[In real estate the terms are so standardized that most people sign and date without reading them. Buying a business has no standard format.]
[Avoid fixating only on price: instead adjust the terms to give the seller more or less based on performance — control the terms, control the deal.]
[Find closing or closed businesses and propose the owners a referral percentage for each of their customers or transactions, then find an adjacent business that would pay ongoing for those warm leads. This also effectively gives them stake in your business, skin in the game.]
[If you know how to turn a failing business profitable, offer them a percentage of the upside as they let you fix it.]
[Find the best lawyers in your area by asking professionals (like accountants), wealthy friends (who often have good attorneys), and local luxury magazines (or vault.com) for their "best of" in the legal field.]
[Attorneys will give you hourly rates, but you can express the list of things you need and ask how much it would cost, then comparison shop ideally for a flat rate.]
[You may want to change lawyers if the deal is of a different type, as there's probably an appropriate specialization for each type. Mid-size firms might be easier as they probably "have a guy" for everything, but make sure to change the guy with the deal type.]
[Contracts can cost 3–25k depending on deal complexity.]
[A seller with few buyers might be willing to accept installments spread over longer terms to close faster, minimize taxes, and earn more money in the end.]
[How much opportunity there is depends on your ability to notice it.]
[Sellers sell their businesses because of death, divorce, disease, distress, dullness, departure, disagreement.]
[Features of good seller opportunities are: 1. founded 10+ years ago; 2. profit under 1 million per year; 3. little competition to buy the business; 4. brick and mortar, or highly-commoditized online; 5. owner in charge for 5+ years; 6. lacking a successor; 7. owner near retirement age; 8. not applicable for bank loans; 9. overpriced for its balance sheet; 10. financials not clean; 11. no leadership team; 12. distressed business; 13. asset sale; 14. established relationship with seller; 15. owner prefers larger exit over long-term or cash flow instead of immediate lumpsum; 16. other sources of income besides the business.]
[Be a walking billboard by: 1. telling everyone you meet that you buy businesses, and 2. asking businesses who the owner is.]
