Intro: Broadcasting live from the Business RadioX studio in Atlanta, Georgia. It’s time for Atlanta Business Radio, brought to you by Kennesaw State University’s Executive MBA program, the accelerated degree program for working professionals looking to advance their career and enhance their leadership skills. And now, here’s your host.

Lee Kantor: Lee Kantor here, another episode of Atlanta Business Radio. And this is going to be a good one. But before we get started, it’s important to recognize our sponsor, CSU’s executive MBA program. Without them, we couldn’t be sharing these important stories. Today on Atlanta Business Radio, we have Ramzi Daklouche with VR Business Sales Atlanta, welcome.

Ramzi Daklouche: Thank you very much, Lee. I appreciate the invite and I appreciate being on your show.

Lee Kantor: Well, I’m excited to learn what you’re up to. Tell us about your firm. How you serving folks?

Ramzi Daklouche: Absolutely. Thank you. So we are you know, at our business Sales Atlanta. We’re brokerage firm dedicated to helping business owners and entrepreneurs achieve their goals, whether they’re looking to sell a business, explore new ventures, or get an expert valuation. We have over 20 years of hands on experience. Our team at Business Sales Atlanta provides full service support at every stage from valuation, strategic marketing, negotiating, negotiation and even closing. We are committed to transparency, which actually sets us apart. We offer clients a real time dashboard to track every step of the process. We work with a diverse client base, both locally and globally, delivering trusted, expert guidance with a personal touch to make every transaction smooth and secure.

Lee Kantor: So what percentage of your business is helping someone sell a business, and what percent is helping someone buy a business?

Ramzi Daklouche: Oh, I think on this. Well, every I think the question is how many times we help buyers versus sellers?

Lee Kantor: Well, just I’m just trying to get an idea of in your business on a daily or weekly basis, are you helping more people buy businesses or are you helping more people sell businesses?

Ramzi Daklouche: No, I’m helping more people sell businesses. I think it’s about 80, 20, 80% are selling businesses, 20% are looking to buy a business. You know, with an idea in mind of what they’re looking for.

Lee Kantor: So if somebody comes to you to sell their business, what does that conversation look like? I would imagine most entrepreneurs think their business is worth more than what it is in on the market.

Ramzi Daklouche: Yeah, you’ll be right. I mean, it’s interesting because we get both the my favorite ones are where they really don’t know the value of their business and they think it’s a lot lower. And I’ve had that lately where they end up in a hug, actually, because they believe that their business is worth X amount, ends up being X plus amount and ends up selling. And I have very good examples of that. But yeah, a lot of businesses especially been around for a long time in the service industry. They tend to think their business is worth a lot more than it is right now. And this is where I really believe in valuations early on in the business, regardless if you’re ready to sell or not, is to get a valuation on your business and understand where your business sits right now. So then you can decide if you want to grow it or sell it.

Lee Kantor: So what are some of the components of a valuation? Is it just strictly how much money are you making or are there other factors.

Ramzi Daklouche: Oh no no there’s a lot more factors. And we take somebody who understands valuations to kind of do this business valuation. And we can also do certified valuation. But in a nutshell, we take uh, you know, what revenues they make, plus net profit and then add back anything that the that the owner uses. For example, if they have personal car, if they have depreciation, if they have interest amortization, all this gets add back some one time, uh, you know, uh purchases they made may be added back. Uh, you know, so cash flow uh, is what we, what we call or and we look at and then we and that’s the add back from everything. So net profit by itself is not really a good indicator of what the business value is. There’s a lot more to it than that.

Lee Kantor: Now how do you work with companies that may be most of their business is online. So they may not have real estate per se, or they may not have a lot of tangible assets, but they have maybe a website that’s been around for a while and has a high page authority, or it has a lot of traffic or it, you know, it has some online value. How do you how do you factor that valuation in when you’re calculating the business’s value.

Ramzi Daklouche: Yeah that’s a great question. So assets actually include not just tangible assets intangible assets. Right. So we look at stuff like, you know traffic flow. We look at how many customers they served. We look at their reputation online. So there’s a lot more than just uh, nowadays assets are not just brick and mortar. And what you have in the back of the warehouse, there’s a lot more than that. And and that also all of it gets calculated in our, in our valuation and also the business track. Right. If it’s tracking up, tracking down or, or stagnant we that also goes into the valuation process.

Lee Kantor: Now how do you um how early is too early to have a conversation with somebody? Because I would imagine every business that starts, it has to end at some point, whether it’s through a sale or it just closes. So I would imagine you want to have conversations with business owners all throughout their life cycle, because you never know when it’s time to sell.

Ramzi Daklouche: Yeah. And if you allow me, I’ll give you a personal, uh, story about that. Lee. So my wife and I started a business during Covid about four years ago, and then, uh, you know, from from my background, um, and it was she was running it from my background. I always looked at exit strategy. Anytime a business, I start a business, I look for an exit strategy. So we had an exit strategy of five years. We said, okay, if we build the business today from 0 in 5 years, we’re going to be. And then every year we measure where we are. So for us, we were doing valuations on a regular basis, but we knew we want to exit in five years. And valuation happens every year. And we before we do our strategy for the next year, we knew what the valuation is. For example, let’s say our valuation was $200,000, right. But we’re not there yet for the year. So what do we do? What are we doing to, you know, to get there or if we’re ahead, okay. Are we ahead of our schedule and because of that we sold in four and a half years very successfully. Um, so to answer your question straight, uh, never too late to have somebody that knows about valuation helping you as you build your strategy on a regular basis to know what the company is worth today, and if you want to make it $1 million company or $2 million company. Uh, and what is it going to take to get there? And then, you know, you have to have the right people around you to do this. Um, so and we help people, we do valuations free. So any listener out there wants to do valuation, you can reach out to us. We don’t charge anything for valuation. The only time we charge if it’s a certified valuation.

Lee Kantor: So what’s the difference between uh valuation for free and a certified valuation.

Ramzi Daklouche: Yeah. The the the process of certified evaluation typically is not very for very small businesses, for bigger businesses, you know, lower middle market to middle market. And uh, and this really is a valuation that is, uh, looks to every part of the business. And also we certified so you can take it to the bank or, you know, get a loan against it. Or sometimes for mergers you need certified valuations. So it goes more in detail about every part of the business.

Lee Kantor: So is this similar to what a person would do. Like they go on Zillow to get an idea of what their house is worth, but then they get, um, a professional kind of valuation before it’s time to get the loan.

Ramzi Daklouche: Yeah. This is actually a very good analogy of it. So and I’ll ask a question, if you ask ten people, hey, do you know the value of your business, your house, you’re probably going to get ten yeses because they probably have been on Zillow or, you know, Zillow sends them. Hey, by the way, the value of your house today is this, um, in business is not the same. If you ask ten people, maybe one of them may have a slight idea where the business value is, even though it’s a second, maybe for some first or largest investment they have. So yeah, it is like that. So if you think of Zillow as your first step and that’s what your your point of view, that will be just a, you know, a broker opinion of values. Very simple way to look at it. If you get appraiser, a professional appraiser to appraise your house and the bank approves it, that will be more certified valuation.

Lee Kantor: Now let’s talk a little bit about the the people you helped. You said 20% of the people you help are someone buying a business. Um, why would someone buy somebody’s business as opposed to either starting their own business or maybe buying a franchise or something along the lines like that? Why would they buy an independent business?

Ramzi Daklouche: Yeah, very good question. Because each one of them has a customer. I spent a lot of, you know, my life in the franchise business as well. If each one of them has a question, I think the toughest one usually is starting my own business. Unless, uh, you know, I know exactly what I’m going to do. I have a market for that already. Starting a business take time to build up, so you may start a start a little bit lower, you know, money wise investment wise, but it’ll take time to kind of get to where you want to be. A lot of people buy businesses because they know that there’s already a base to that, and they buy to kind of say, hey, I can, um, I can develop a couple of things. I can change the marketing. I can add, uh, a couple of chairs here, whatever it is, to kind of continue to grow the business. So they buy at least some kind of cash flow in the business and in hopes and if they have strategy, they build it to more. So that’s really the difference between buying new and buying, uh, you know, somebody’s business, right? The third one, which is franchising, is so you can buy system. You’re not really, uh, having to build a system from zero. You already have, uh, you know, uh, operating procedures, you have training, you have all these systems in place, and hopefully the franchise has a reputation. So people come to you because you are a b, C franchise and not just, uh, you know, independent business.

Lee Kantor: Now, what is it like when somebody, if they’re not using a professional or an expert like yourself? Like how do how do they even exit their business? Like what is their what are they thinking? Like, I don’t understand. Like to me, what you said rang true. Like, as soon as I started a business I’m thinking about. I have to have a way out of this business. So what does a typical person who’s running kind of a, you know, a small brick and mortar or, you know, a barber shop or a hardware store or just some local business or even, you know, a small ad agency or law firm or dentist. How what are they thinking when it’s the end of the road? Like how how do they typically exit?

Ramzi Daklouche: Well, you know what I think, uh, it’s a very good question, Lee, and one that puzzles me. Since I’ve been in this business, why do people not really reach out to business brokers? One is knowledge. Um, you know, we’re not we’re not a market as well as real estate agents do. So there’s real estate agents everywhere. We’re not really that big of a community, even though there’s a lot of businesses in the US, right? So that’s one of them. So they don’t know about us. The second thing is they believe they know best, which is fine. If you know best, then you’re you know, you have finance background and you can figure out what the value of the business is and go through the process of selling it. But more and more people that I talk to don’t know. Right. And they’re leery about using somebody because of course we are professionals, so we get paid for our service. Of course. Um, and they don’t want to do this, but the more they engage us or engage, you know, a broker and we are intermediaries. So we really work for the seller and the buyer. Um, they find out that if we give them a valuation work on the valuation, they’ll end up better off, uh, selling or have a better chance of selling the business than without us at all. So going by themselves, unless you’re going to sell to your cousin or family member or somebody you know, or a competitor? You’re really better off always using professional. Even if you sell it to a competitor, you’re better off using professional even just for the valuation, because not every conversation I have ends up with somebody signing a selling agreement. Right? I’d be more than happy to help people just because I want to help people. And then if they want to sign up with me, great. But if they don’t, at least they know the value of their business.

Lee Kantor: Now when they work with you, is it like a residential real estate, uh, relationship where you’re the person just gets paid a percentage of whatever the selling price is or is it with you? You have to just pay a flat fee. Like, like how does the financial of this work.

Ramzi Daklouche: Yeah, uh, it really is like real estate. We are, um, you know, we get success fee based on on making sure the business sells. Um, so exactly like real estate.

Lee Kantor: So it’s the same. So there’s really not a lot of risk when they’re working with you. There’s only really upside, you know, because theoretically you’re going to be selling it for higher than I would get myself.

Ramzi Daklouche: Well, yeah, you hope so, right? I mean, that’s the intent. I mean, you know, when you’re working with, uh, a group like ours, you’re always going to get the best advice. I don’t, you know, I don’t celebrate just having listings in the books. I celebrate making sure we have a listing that’s salable. Right? And that we actually work and do the marketing that we need to to make sure we sell the listing. So to answer your question, yes, you get better value from us. Plus we deal with it from A to Z, so you don’t have to deal with the buyer on regular basis. You don’t have to deal with the number of tire kickers. You don’t have to deal with answering all the questions, and you don’t have to deal with the paperwork, because once the listing is listed and then you have a buyer and then the work really starts, right? You know, to finalize the due diligence between the buyer and the seller to get it through to closing. That takes time and takes a lot of effort. And our team, that’s what they specialize in.

Lee Kantor: So now if I’m ready to sell my business, you mentioned the first thing I have to do is get a valuation. So I have some number that is kind of close to reality of what we’re going to put it out to the market with, but are there other steps involved? Because I would imagine if I have employees, it’s not something that I’m, you know, shouting from the rafters.

Ramzi Daklouche: Yeah. So everything we do is confidential, even we go to a business. If a business owner wants to meet with us, we meet outside or we meet after hours. So to keep it very confidential, because a lot of sensitive stuff, when you talk about, um, employees, first, you don’t want them to leave, start looking for another job because, uh, you know, um, the business is going to sell. Uh, and, you know, it’s interesting, uh, one of the first questions I have, how am I going to protect my team now. Oh, I can’t wait to get rid of him. How am I going to protect my team? Which is, um, very noble. Of business. Small business owners are very, very thoughtful of their team. So very noble of them to do that. So, yeah. So once, once, uh, you know, first of all, I don’t sign any agreements selling agreements unless I have valuation. So we don’t we just don’t do that. It’s easy sometimes to say, all right, we’ll sell it for you. Here you go. Sign here. Let’s do valuation. Let’s do this. No. If you and I don’t agree on the price, we’re not going to sign an agreement. You may have to find somebody else that would agree with you, because I’m going to give you the honest truth about what the business is worth. And and going through the, you know, the steps of making sure I know what the business is worth. So that’s really the first step. Once you sign the agreement, then the actual work starts for us with how to list it, how to market it. You know what size to go to. Do we need to put on a site, or is it one of these sales that we just have to call a bigger competitor to buy you out? There’s so many, tactics and ways to sell a business that, you know, our team kind of gets involved in to make sure we finalize the sale.

Lee Kantor: So you’re the one who’s making the call. You’re the one who’s negotiating.

Ramzi Daklouche: I yeah, we negotiate to a point. We do not we don’t negotiate, uh, because, you know, usually the seller has a right to refuse or accept an offer. Right. So but we do make sure we give the business, put it, highlight the business to the best of our ability and to the best of the business, right, to make sure that the business shows up properly. So you you mentioned a couple of times real estate’s just like real estate. If you want to sell a business, get the business ready to sell. Right. So in business you have a lot of stuff you got to get ready. One of them is your paperwork, your finances, your bills, you know, contracts you have with vendors. All that stuff must be ready to share with the buyer at some point, right? Especially after they finish. Uh, especially when they are doing their due diligence. That’s the number one thing. Second, if it’s a brick and mortar business or even a warehouse, get it cleaned up, get it ready, right? Because if so, is better, it sells better. So not not different than a house. Um, and then make sure you don’t have any outstanding, uh, bills or outstanding liens on your business that will kind of, uh, scare away a buyer or actually breaks the sale because you cannot really sell your business because you have liens on it. So just like a house, you got to make sure, uh, everything is aligned to sell the business, get your business ready.

Lee Kantor: But something that is different than a house is you can’t put a for sale sign up in front of it, and you can’t, um, kind of you’re not going to be in the selling your house. You’re not calling people up directly and saying, hey, you know, you live around here, you want to buy this house. Like you’re doing some proactive things to sell the house and not just passive things.

Ramzi Daklouche: Oh, absolutely. Yeah. Yeah, yeah. I’m completely unlike a you know, you’re not going to tell somebody to come. You can’t put a, you know, a. Yeah, we use we use a technology to make sure market the business. So if you talk about marketing the business, you know, there are well known sites where you can list business depending on what it is. And, you know, for online businesses, there are some sites for brick and mortar and service businesses and other sites as well. So you got to make sure you market it properly for them. But also if that’s the only thing that the broker depends on, you may have to wait a little bit before a sale. There are other ways you could do it. We you know, since I started the firm and especially in the past three years, um, we’ve been really engaged with AI and making sure that we use the latest AI tools from finding, uh, buyers to how we list as well. So that really helped our business a lot, but also helped the sellers, uh, you know, spotlight their business the best way possible.

Lee Kantor: So what happens, um, at the end when there’s agreement of the price, like, are you is it like a closing? Is it similar? You know, where you’re in a room with lawyers and you’re signing papers and writing checks?

Ramzi Daklouche: Yeah. Depending on the size of the business. Uh, you know, typically, if the business is small, let’s say less than, you know, three, $4 million, they don’t engage, you know, lawyers directly because the process is, uh, you know, similar to closing on a house. So there’s one lawyer. The transactional lawyer does not represent either one of them. Uh, that’s very familiar with how to write an asset purchase agreement and then finish finalizing the closing. And if there’s a, you know, owners financing or SBA loan financing, they’re, um, you know, very well versed on how to deal with that. So one lawyer can suffice and do both. Sometimes it’ll be more complicated where the buyer has their own lawyer or seller has their own lawyer. And then you have a lawyer that does still transactions. So it just depends on the on the complexity of the of the of the purchase.

Lee Kantor: So do you have a success story you can share? Don’t name the name of the business, but maybe explain how they came to you with their business and how you were able to help them get a a successful sale.

Ramzi Daklouche: Oh, sure. Yeah, there’s a few. I’ll take one from one that really, for me, success is not by how fast. Sometimes we sell it, because that’s not really as important for me as it is for the seller. But this one in particular, a person that had a lot of the business they’re in, just had some personal issues. They could not deal with the managing the business anymore. They want to work in the business, but they don’t want to manage it anymore. Uh, you know, she found me and, uh, she gave me what she would like to get for the business. And, uh, through the value that literally happened, just, you know, four weeks ago, Lee, when I met her first. And through the valuation, it was actually about 75% more than she expected from the valuation. And when I said earlier today, earlier to you said, you know, sometimes you get a hug and these are the good days. And she really gave me a hug. And she was, you know, crying that we can’t sell it this way. And then, you know, once I gave she signed and then, you know, listing we listed this really fast.

Ramzi Daklouche: Within 48 hours it was listed and in on different websites and different places and got three offers. Actually the the offer that she signed on was done yesterday. She signed the offer yesterday and it’s already in the lawyer’s hand. And I’m going to meet with the buyer at 3:00 for some due diligence in the location. And hopefully we close within three weeks. So there will be for me, that’s pretty fast for any business. Pretty fast businesses don’t close the way homes do. Our selling cycle is a little bit, uh, longer because some due diligence if there’s an SBA loan takes time as well. With this one, the buyer became a cash buyer, which makes it easy. And now she’s going to be able to go with her mom outside the country, uh, in, in, in January, which she didn’t expect to go. So for me, these are the reasons we do this. It’s not the size of the ticket. Because if you do, right, uh, business will come to you. So I really believe in that. And these are the good days, Lee.

Lee Kantor: So do you have a niche that you serve, or do you work with all kinds of businesses, like are you good with medical or you’re good with professional services or manufacturing brick and mortar, like, do you have a specialty or any business is a good business for you?

Ramzi Daklouche: Yeah, all of it is good business for you. But I’m going to ask you in two ways. One of them, I had an opportunity to work abroad for five years as a head strategist for big group. Big conglomerate. We had seven sectors, 84 companies, and my job was strategy for them. Part of it is exit strategy, merger, acquisition work. So I literally worked in every sector very heavily for five years. So that kind of, uh, got me involved in things that just never even minerals and, uh, and mine, I mean, you know, mines and, uh, and oil. Um, so when I, when I started this, I was very well versed in most, uh, you know, most fields. So I’m pretty comfortable in all of them. So they ask the question differently. Every business has a profit and loss statement. Every business sells based on net net worth, not, you know, net profit minus all the add backs that they have. Uh, so the valuation for us may be a little bit different from one thing to another. Uh, but at the end of the day, if you do your homework, you can get to the bottom line of valuation. And if you have a good marketing team, you can market it to the right group.

Lee Kantor: So if somebody wants to learn more, have a more substantive conversation with you or somebody on your team. Is there a website? Is there the best way to connect?

Ramzi Daklouche: Yeah, yeah, they can connect through our website. We’d love to, you know, have them out over at our office. Our offices are in Dunwoody Sandy Springs area. So beautiful offices. Or they can reach us at, you know, Vrbas, Worldcom. We have a contact me. Um, we’re no pressure firm. Um, again, like I said, you do. Well, you get your business, you get your, uh. What? What’s coming to you? So, um. Yeah. Vr Bizworld VR Bizworld is our website.

Lee Kantor: Well, thank you so much for sharing your story today. You’re doing such important work, and we appreciate you.

Ramzi Daklouche: Thank you. Lee. Appreciate you. You’re doing a great job, by the way.

Lee Kantor: Thank you. All right. This is Lee Kantor. We’ll see you all next time on Atlanta Business Radio.