The Personal Decisions Involved in Selling a Business, with Cliff Bishop, Brady Ware Capital
Cliff Bishop: We are seeing a lot of sellers that kind of say, “I’m tired of this now.” Or maybe the opposite. Maybe they’ve been away from the office a little bit, working remotely, and say, “You know, I like this. It’s time for me to move on if I can get the value for my business.” And I think it’s so important as a seller. I think there’s a lot of business owners listening to this – it’s not all about dollars and cents. There’s a lot of emotion and personal preference in this.
Cliff Bishop: So, you might ask Mike and I, “When should I sell my business?” We can’t answer that. We can educate you on some of the facts, but it’s a very personal decision. When is it time to walk away? We have some owners that are 80 years old that it’s their life. They’re never going to sell and I would tell them they shouldn’t, because they come in every day. It keeps them vibrant. It’s what they like to do. There’s others that are 45 that say, “I view this as just like buying a stock. If you can give me the right number, I’m going to sell it.”
Cliff Bishop: I have a passion about that, though. As a seller, you need to think about your life after selling. But, honestly, most people when they sell are going to have enough money to live happily ever after if we do our jobs right, which we will. But from a lifestyle and day to day “what am I going to do?” That’s really important.
Cliff Bishop, President, Brady Ware Capital
Cliff Bishop joined Brady Ware’s Mergers & Acquisition’s team in 2004 and is President of Brady Ware Capital. Cliff has more than 20 years of experience working with middle-market companies. Formerly a Senior Vice President in commercial banking with a large regional bank, Cliff provides creative solutions relating to mergers, acquisitions, and capital raising projects. Cliff’s creativity combined with his extensive experience in structuring, negotiating, and executing transactions equates to exceptional results for Brady Ware clients.
Cliff earned his undergraduate degree in finance from Indiana University and his MBA from the University of Dayton. He also holds the Series 7 and 24 securities registrations. Cliff was chosen as one of Dayton’s “Forty Under 40” business leader award recipients and is a graduate of Leadership Dayton.
Cliff is an active volunteer/board member with the YMCA of Metropolitan Dayton and currently serves as the Chair of its Board of Directors. He has also been a volunteer for Big Brothers/Big Sisters of the Miami Valley and Junior Achievement in the Dayton Public Schools.
You can listen to the full Decision Vision interview here.
The “One Minute Interview” series is produced by John Ray and in the North Fulton studio of Business RadioX® in Alpharetta. You can find the full archive of shows by following this link.
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