Intro: [00:00:07] Broadcasting live from the Business RadioX studios in Atlanta, Georgia. It’s time for Buy a Business Near Me, brought to you by the Business Radio X Ambassador program, helping business brokers sell more local businesses. Now, here’s your host.

Stone Payton: [00:00:32] Welcome to another exciting and informative edition of Buy a Business Near Me Stone Payton here with you this afternoon. Please join me in welcoming to the broadcast with Transworld Business Advisors, Mr. Carey Davis. Good afternoon, sir.

Carey Davis: [00:00:50] Hi, Stone. Good afternoon.

Stone Payton: [00:00:52] Man, it is such a pleasure to have you on the show. I’ve really been looking forward to this conversation. I got a lot of questions. I don’t know that we’re going to get to them all, but I do think a good place to start would be if you could articulate for me and our listeners mission purpose, What are you really out there trying to do for folks, man?

Carey Davis: [00:01:15] Well, I’m based in New York City and. And on the one hand, there is some things unique about owning and buying and selling a business in New York City, and in other cases, it’s like anywhere else. But one of the unique parts of New York is that we attract people from all over. So we’re making good deals between good people. And very often those people are from way different places. In fact, we’ve seen recently and this is raise my eyebrows over the past couple of months in talking with friends of mine who are immigration attorneys, the number of buyers of business in Europe who want to be in New York because of the war in Ukraine has increased dramatically. You see, it’s just not it’s not just a war in Ukraine. It’s a war in Europe. And just like previous generations, people want to come to the United States because of the strength of the economy here and the strength of opportunity here. So we have a lot of businesses. You take that increase in interest of buyers. Now, let’s talk about sellers. The pandemic stirred things up.

Carey Davis: [00:02:45] Their business. Their many business. Besides the sadness and tragedy of the health idea. But how did it affect small businesses? Many small businesses closed. Many businesses started new with lower rents. Right. Right. And and many people. Many people, mostly baby boomers. Sat there and said, What the heck am I doing running this business? My kids don’t want it. I want to sell. I want to go travel. I want to. So the pandemic really shook things up. So we have a lot of businesses that people want to sell because they they want to move on with their life. We have new buyers coming in. Because of the international situation. And we have through many places in the United States, of course, an increase in immigration. So we have a lot of multicultural buyers of businesses. So all of that, you know, there’s an old, old saying. Stone When when there’s change, there’s opportunity. Well, there’s a hell of a lot of change going on. And that means there’s a lot of opportunity for folks to buy, to sell and to franchise businesses.

Stone Payton: [00:04:12] So what’s the backstory, man? How did you find yourself in this line of work?

Carey Davis: [00:04:18] Well, I’m happy to tell you, as a brother radio person, I was in the radio business, radio management business for many decades. I grew up in the business. My family owned a very strong, successful small market radio station in downstate Illinois. And after college, I worked there for a while, but I had my eyes on the big city. I wanted to I just wanted to be in New York City. So I moved here and got a good job with news and talk radio stations and ended up working for KGW Newsradio in Philadelphia and then promoted to their sister station as general sales manager of 1010 wins, which is a powerful radio station in New York City and all news radio station, you kind of kind of the WSB of New York, I can relate to you in Atlanta there. So and then I made a move to be general manager of Spanish language radio in New York. So I’m I’m very, very aware of the multicultural situation in the country. So after. That leads us to about ten years ago when really the radio, the terrestrial radio business, I think, kind of moved on to a place that I didn’t want to go to. Through consolidation and downsizing and moving to Internet. I was from the days of strong, powerful AM and FM radio stations, and I just thought it was time for some new folks to come in. So I love business and I got to stay busy. So that’s when a bunch of us got together with Eric Strauss and Eric bought the franchise for Transworld in New York City. And so we have a great team of people who’ve known each other for 20, 30 years. So we just transferred from radio advertising, marketing to marketing and selling and helping people sell, buy and franchise businesses.

Stone Payton: [00:06:38] So do you feel like that experience base though, has helped you and in retrospect, really prepared you to be of tremendous service in this world? Was that background helpful for you?

Carey Davis: [00:06:51] Oh, absolutely. Because, for example, a secret of, well, let’s say let’s take a rule of radio. Tell him what you’re going to tell him. Tell him. Tell him what you told him. Right. It’s very. You keep the message focused in as you do in your program, Stone. You repeat the message, so you’re getting frequency of it, and then you’re reminding of the message. We have the same thing in selling of a business. There are strict steps that go in order. The first is the planning stage. Then there’s the search stage. Deal making and then closing. So there is a process into putting on a radio program, and that could be news or talk or what the playlist is at any type of music radio station. And there are rules involved in the steps to selling a business and getting a business prepared to be sold. Imagine that I’m talking about sales process, but if your listeners are haven’t listed their business for sale yet but are thinking, well, maybe I’m I’m five years away. That’s a great time to get started. In planning the process.

Stone Payton: [00:08:20] So what are you finding the most rewarding about the work, man? What’s the most fun about it for you?

Carey Davis: [00:08:29] Well, I think it’s helping. It’s. I’m meeting people who have. Created and worked. Very hard and their life. Who are their businesses, their baby. They have. Given everything. You know, this is many, many of these hardworking folks are like the, you know, the grocery stores or the corner store in the city where you live upstairs from the store. And and and it’s people define. I’m not saying that it’s the right thing to do. I don’t do it now, but I did use to do it. People define their life often by their work. Yeah, right. They put that much into it. So when you’re saying, okay, when when you built this baby up and top of my mind, I’m thinking of a moving company, for example. A client that we have emigrated here. From another country. He worked again, his first truck. He moved it. And 40 years later. He’s one of the largest moving companies in New York. And now it’s time to sell that business. That is his baby. Right. Right. So you have to get along with your broker, Right? You better get along with your broker because it is not easy. It is it is not easy to sell a business. And I wish I wish we could say that we sold all the businesses that we list. That’s not the case. It’s not nearly the case. I’d say we sell about on a national average, About one third of the businesses that get listed for sale actually sell. Why is that number so low? Some people think that’s a low number. Others told me they thought it was high.

Stone Payton: [00:10:42] It sounds low to me.

Carey Davis: [00:10:44] Yeah, it is low. And I wish I wish we could say it’s higher, but I’ll be straight with you. It is about 30% of the businesses that are listed for sale. Finally end up end up selling the biggest reason for not selling. Is that the seller? Has is asking too much money. And we have told people. We’ll give you what we consider a fair listing price when we’re talking about, okay, I want to sell my business. We’ll take a look at the trends the last year compared to the year before. What are the add backs, the employees that are staying on, etc. And I can go through that list, but after we review that, we will recommend a listing price and sometimes they’ll come back and say, Oh no, I was looking for $5 Million and let’s say we’re we’re recommending a listing price of $2 Million. We won’t take the listing. And so it’ll go unsold. We know this. The businesses that do sell. Have been priced appropriately. That’s a different way to look at it. If we look at the businesses that have sold and this goes everything from drugstores to dog walking services to nursing home maids to restaurants, etc., when you combine all categories and you look okay and Transworld is a big company and we sell more businesses than anybody else when we look, let’s say, All right, let’s take a look at the small businesses that have been sold. The thing that’s in common is what they sold. They were priced appropriately.

Stone Payton: [00:12:40] So you mentioned timeline a few moments ago. What is a prudent timeline? For example, I own 40% of a pretty successful media company. My business partner is Lee Kantor. He and I own the business radio network. How far out should we be preparing if we want to turn around and sell it to our studio partners or out on the on the marketplace? Because it’s not next month, right?

Carey Davis: [00:13:04] Yeah, no, I agree with you. Well, first of all, it depends. A couple of different answers to that. One of the first things a prospective buyer says to me and to the seller. If your business is so good, why are you selling it right? That’s a good question. It’s a fair question. What is the motivation for the sale? And when we look at. Again, we study all the businesses that have been have been sold or businesses that we have listed and we look under what’s the motivation for sale? We find. That when there is a motivation. Of sickness, divorce. Retirement. Those have a higher percentage of selling rather than. Um. I would just like to see what. What kind of response I would have. So when there is a. And I think one of the reasons Stone is to you and your partner should say, and other people who are listening, who are thinking about when do I sell my business? I would say, keep running your business as long as you’re you’re happy and healthy and profitable. You like what You’re doing. Great. Keep doing it. And there are things you can do to prepare for, let’s say, well, maybe things change and things can change in a day, but let’s say things. You’ll be ready in about four years. Well, there’s a lot you can do in the next four years to get a business ready for sale. A lot you can do. Don’t wait until that day comes. There’s a lot you can do to prepare for that. And here are some of those things. We look at the multiples, look at the sales price. Successful sales of companies have kept good records. Keeping historical records of your business is mighty important. It’s not just for your taxes. But when it’s time to sell, when the buyer comes in and here are annual reports that you’ve done. In other words, we’ve downloaded your brain. You’ve downloaded your brain every year with an annual report that’s valuable to the new owner coming in.

Stone Payton: [00:15:48] I’ll bet it is. So. So there’s you helping an organization sell their their business. But then there’s also you have to attract new clients. Have you kind of cracked the code? The whole sales and marketing process for you attracting new clients?

Carey Davis: [00:16:09] Well, I yes, I’m a strong believer in networking. Hmm. A strong believer in networking and. And. And talking to people. One. My, my, B and I networking group. And if your listeners are not familiar, that’s Business Network International, which is a strong networking group. Ours happens to be the largest in the country. And we refer $1,000,000 every month to fellow members. We have 85 people in the chapter, and I’ve been in this group for ten years, and some of my strongest leads come from people in the chapter. Hmm. And for example, I we’re all plugged into each other. I will say, like I did in our meeting yesterday, I’ll say, Who fixes your car? If you know, a car repair. Body work or gas station owner who’s a baby boomer. Please introduce me. And guess what? You know, out of 85 people, three or four. Know somebody. Yeah. You know, they’re close to their their car repair guy and he’s. He’s, you know, is a baby boomer and is thinking, you know, he wants to move to Florida next year. That’s a perfect introduction. So. It’s different than a big difference between a real estate broker and a business broker. Is that the real estate ad is public. The business saying of a business is confidential, so you don’t hear about business brokers that much.

Stone Payton: [00:18:00] Yikes. Yeah. That really right? Yeah. So that’s got to be that’s a whole different ballgame, isn’t it?

Carey Davis: [00:18:06] Exactly. I can’t tell you that. It’s the. That’s the body shop at Amsterdam and 103rd Street that’s for sale. I’m not going to say that publicly.

Stone Payton: [00:18:17] Yeah.

Carey Davis: [00:18:18] I’m going to say there’s a gas station in Manhattan. For sale with a great lease. You know, you have to have a good lease if you’re going to have a successfully sell a business unless well, I’ll get into that later. But you have to have a. The ad is confidential, so we only give enough information publicly. So those buyers interested, really interested, will contact us. Then they will sign the legal document of a non disclosure document and then we’ll. And then we’ll give them the top line a little more detailed information. So who The buyers of businesses. Let’s take that example of a car repair place that’s doing. Who? Million dollars a year, you know, some big some big numbers. And they’re taking, you know, 500,000 to the bottom line. This is not a small business. Some car repair businesses are doing great. Imagine. The supply chain issues going on with new cars that are not being delivered. Car repair businesses are booming right now, so they can’t get out of the way of the businesses. A lot of people, except for a lot of immigrants, are not moving into the business. So you have a lot of young folks from other countries who are very well qualified to own this. And you can get good SBA funding for those people who qualify. So. Who are the types of buyers for businesses? Again, we use the example of a car repair business. Number one, there could be a car repair business on the other side of town and they’re interested. So they would have two locations in your city, right?

Stone Payton: [00:20:23] Hmm. Yeah.

Carey Davis: [00:20:24] Next would be, let’s say there’s a body shop nearby that could be now turn into a body shop and car repair. Third. And here’s here’s an important one again during the pandemic. There will be buyers in other industries or foreign buyers, for example. We’ve got people from Wall Street in New York calling us all the time. They want to get out of that business. They want to own something. They may not know the pool business or elevator service business or moving business, but they want to own that type of company. What makes them a possible owner and could make a sale successful is that if that company’s number two employee. Not the owner, but the number two employee would be staying on. Ah, right then. Someone from outside of the business. Could could buy it. So there’s the another reason why you don’t want to tell people your business is for sale. You’ve got to keep it to yourself. Keep your mouth shut. Pick a broker. May not be me, but pick one. Give them the exclusive listing and then at the appropriate time. When a deal is made, there’s going to be an that’s when you talk to the top employees, because we have this strange thing in America of when a company is sold, people think they’re going to be laid off, when in fact, though, we hear horror stories like Elon Musk, etc.. But normally buyers want the employees to stay on. They don’t want them to leave. They’re desperate to have them stay on. Yeah, right.

Stone Payton: [00:22:28] So tell me a little bit about deal structure. I bet you’ve seen a lot of different kinds of deals and it’s not always here’s a check, Here’s the keys, right? I mean, sometimes even the owner might even hang out for a while, Right, to help them transition.

Carey Davis: [00:22:44] Well, Oh, absolutely. When we hear that the seller is willing to stay on as an employee or as a consultant. But at their own hours, the hours they choose, that can be the key to a successful sale. Hmm. So. Absolutely. I’m trying to think of a of a business right now that I don’t want to divulge anything.

Stone Payton: [00:23:18] But that’s okay. But they could also but an owner might even be able to finance a piece of the deal, too, right?

Carey Davis: [00:23:24] Yeah. Seller financing is very common. Very common. Let’s let’s just give an example on this, okay? Let’s say business. Let’s say a shoe store. Take a shoe store there. The owner puts in her pocket 250,000 a year. That’s what we say. She puts in her pocket $250,000 a year. Mm hmm. A listing price, maybe 500,000. Now. Maybe she won’t. Maybe she tells us, Oh, I want $1.5 Million. And we said, Don’t sell, don’t sell the business then. But a decent listing price would be 4.99, even like at 1000 under that. For a company that’s 250,000. And we would say a buyer could come in. Put down 200,000. And then they would pay a certain amount every month over three, four or five years. Add an interest rate. This is a loan. Maybe 6% interest rate. Mm hmm. And so you would have seller financing available. And that’s often the case when it may not be qualify for an SBA loan, for example. So seller financing is one. Or somebody we see deal structures happen where let’s say it’s listed the the business this the seller is putting 250,000 a year in her pocket. She’s listed the business at 500,000. She’s motivated to sell. And. A buyer comes in and I’ll say and says. I’ll pay 300,000 cash. And maybe a quarter on the right day. And she accepts because she was highly motivated.

Stone Payton: [00:25:40] Right before we wrap, I’d like to leave our sellers in particular. I’d like to leave them with a. With a few pro tips for helping them get their company in shape before they even listed for sale. You touched on a couple of things earlier, but just some things for people like Lee and I to be thinking about because we’ve got to get our ducks in a row if we’re going to get the top dollar and the deal we want. Right.

Carey Davis: [00:26:08] Right. Well, all right. So what are the relevant facts? What is the reasonableness? Does it pass the smell test? Does it make sense? Have you kept good records? What’s the profitability of the business? And here’s one stone. Somebody buys a business because of the upside potential they see. Now, what they pay for it is how you have performed. But the reason they buy the business is because of the upside potential. So you even though you’re not taking it there, they’re going to the buyer is going to take it to that point. You should know where that upside potential is of your business. Hmm.

Stone Payton: [00:27:01] Right, right, right.

Carey Davis: [00:27:03] Keeping good records. Get those personal expenses out.

Stone Payton: [00:27:10] I resemble that remark.

Carey Davis: [00:27:12] Right. Get those. Get those personal expenses out of there. Keep great records. What’s the growth potential? How’s the equipment, the location, the lease. The staff is very important. I consider this. I consider your key staff members assets to the company, not costs. Because if somebody who’s not from the radio industry comes in, or even if they are from the radio industry, if you’ve got a great number two person working there, then that’s an asset for the company.

Stone Payton: [00:27:50] Oh, absolutely.

Carey Davis: [00:27:52] Right. What’s the competition doing and what’s the overall management? And this may sound strange, but the less the owner does in the business, the better. Because when we list a business that we can say absentee owned, Oh man, do we have a lot of people interested in that?

Stone Payton: [00:28:17] Yeah, no, it makes perfect sense. But you’re right. At first it sounds a little bit a little bit counterintuitive. All right, man, if our listeners want to reach out, have a conversation with you about any of these topics, what’s the best way for them to connect with you?

Carey Davis: [00:28:30] Oh, please email me. And it’s C Davis. At T WorldCom. C Davis. A t, WorldCom.

Stone Payton: [00:28:42] Carrie, thank you so much for sharing your story with us and investing the time to share your insight and your perspective. This has been incredibly informative and you’re doing good work, man. We sure appreciate you.

Carey Davis: [00:28:56] Thanks, John. And the best to you and your staff and your partner and your listeners for the new year.

Stone Payton: [00:29:03] Thank you. All right. Until next time, this is Stone Payton for our guest today. Carrie Davis with Transworld Business Advisors. And everyone here at the Business Radio X Family saying we’ll see you next time on Buy a Business near Me.

Intro: [00:00:07] Broadcasting live from the Business RadioX studios in Atlanta, Georgia. It’s time for Buy a Business Near Me. Brought to you by the Business Radio X Ambassador program, helping business brokers sell more local businesses. Now, here’s your host.

Stone Payton: [00:00:32] Welcome to another exciting and informative edition of Buy a Business Near Me. Stone Payton here with you this morning. Please join me in welcoming to the broadcast with Transworld Business Advisors, Dr. Doug Brown. Good morning, sir.

Douglas Brown: [00:00:49] Good morning, Stone. How are you this fine morning?

Stone Payton: [00:00:51] I am doing well and I have had the pleasure of having on air conversations with a couple of other folks in the Transworld Business Advisors system. Always informative, always inspiring. So I’ve really been looking forward to this conversation. What part of the country are you serving, man? Where is where is your go? As my wife would say.

Douglas Brown: [00:01:16] Well, our office is based in Richmond, Virginia, and serves most of Virginia. I operate out of Williamsburg myself.

Stone Payton: [00:01:23] What a beautiful area of the country. How in the world did you get into this line of work, man? What’s the back story?

Douglas Brown: [00:01:32] Well, the back story is I wish I would have discovered it about 20 years sooner. I had a small business myself in Atlanta after the dot com crash and all of that, and most of the people I knew weren’t getting employed. So I decided to hire myself, started a small business, and it was doing pretty well until I got notified to my reserve unit was going to be called up for the Gulf War. And I didn’t think I could run a start up small business from that distance. So I went to sell it and I was successful in that. But that’s where the problems began and would not have happened had I had a business broker, which I didn’t even know was a thing at the time. So I went about my way and I went off. When I came back from the Army, I did business consulting work of different kinds for many years and a few years back Transworld contacted me and said, Hey, you know, you’re doing this consulting stuff. Have you thought about being a business broker? And then we’ll know because I didn’t know that that was the thing. So they told me about it and showed me what they did and I fell in love with it right away. It’s really something I wish I would have found decades sooner. I just like working with small business owners, helping them achieve the best they can with the assets that they have. And then for many of them, it’s that’s their pet, their retirement plan. So you really want to always makes me always want to do the best I can for them.

Stone Payton: [00:02:59] Well, and there really are I’m learning so many moving parts on both sides of the equation, buyer and seller alike. After hosting this series. Now for a little while, I cannot imagine being a buyer or a seller without someone with your expertise in this domain. There just there are too many ways to get it done there. There are plenty of opportunities to to stumble. So are you finding that you gravitate to a certain type of individual, a certain type of buyer, a certain type of seller, certain types of businesses?

Douglas Brown: [00:03:37] Well, Stone, I do what we call the main street businesses, which is the ones that have revenues. Revenues, typically between a half 1,000,005 million. You get much bigger than that. You’re starting to get into stock transactions, which takes a whole lot of different licensing and so forth, and it’s a different kind of a sale. So no, we don’t pick a particular industry to work with because in the end, the sales process other than how you how you inventory the product and that kind of thing, is pretty much the same across all those smaller businesses. And the places you advertise is pretty much the same. You know, there are some sub communities in there like the convenience stores and gas stations that seem to have their own ecosystem going on. But for the rest of them, it’s pretty much the same across the board, and that’s who I serve.

Stone Payton: [00:04:30] Okay. Let’s talk about funding a little bit on the on the buyer side. Let’s hypothetically say that my wife, Holly, is not going to let me tap into her 401. To buy this business I’ve got my eye on. It’s okay. I’ve got some options. Right. Can you walk us through some places ought to be looking at or thinking about for funding that business here on Main Street in Woodstock, Georgia.

Douglas Brown: [00:04:57] Yeah, sure. And I mean, first let me say that, you know, there’s this perception that money going into a small business is risk money. And that’s mostly because the dot com stuff, you know, you do a startup, you might lose all your money. But if you’re buying an existing small business that’s making a profit, you know what you’re getting. It’s been doing it for two or three years. It’s going to continue doing it. And, you know, historically, those returns have been greater than what you can get out of the regular markets. But to your point, there are people that don’t want to use their own money to buy it. The Small Business Administration’s loans is what people tend to think about. And they’re not as readily available in the main street market as you would think. Because, well, first of all, it’s a misnomer that the Small Business Administration is doing anything other than providing a guarantee. It’s actually a program that the lenders will use to guarantee the loans that they issue. So lenders have different rules for what they’re going to do. But for the most part, you’ve got to start out with three years of the last three years being profitable and a couple of years ago you could get away with saying, but COVID. But that’s kind of going away now.

Douglas Brown: [00:06:10] And you’ve got to be profitable enough not only to throw away, throw up enough income to service the loan, of course, but also to provide the owner. The requirement is that the owner has to be the operator of the business. So this business has to throw off enough money to pay the owner what they consider to be a reasonable salary. So you can’t say, I’m going to run a 20 person accounting firm and I’m going to pay myself 20,000 a year. I know that that doesn’t work. So it’s not that easy to get Small Business Administration financing, which means if they won’t touch it for the most part, most of the banks and the other lenders won’t either. The non SBA type lenders, they typically have deal sizes that are at least 350,000. A lot of them are higher than that. Some of them will require nets, annual nets on the order of 350 or 400,000. So at least for the market I’m in, getting financing from a third party is only for the best of the best. If you can get that, that’s great and it makes it a lot easier to get a buyer otherwise. And most of the deals on the main street level, the seller is going to have to provide quite a bit of the financing.

Stone Payton: [00:07:24] Okay, So say more about that, because I do. I walked into hosting this series and I’ve been hosting it for several months now. My picture of how this worked was I write you a check, you hand me the keys, and the deal structure can look a lot different than that and in the seller can finance all part. There’s a lot of different ways to do it and the seller be involved in helping finance the thing. Yes.

Douglas Brown: [00:07:49] Absolutely. One of the rules I tell buyers that I’m working with and sellers is if the buyer is coming in asking you to borrow the money to buy the business with, then they don’t really get to negotiate what the price of the business is. Mm hmm. And the seller is going to require the buyer to put down enough money to where if the buyer should happen to drive the business into the ground. And the business then says to the seller, I’m sorry, we just can’t pay you those debt payments we were talking about. Yeah, there’s a personal guarantee. A lot of sellers are unwise and refuse to pay the fee to a credit bureau to run the credit checks on the buyer. But even so, there’s a lot of things that doesn’t pick up. I mean, you really don’t know if this person would be good at running a business or not. So the seller is going to require enough of a down payment that if this whole seller financing thing blows up on them, they walk away with enough money. They feel like they didn’t just give this guy their business and now they got nothing. So I have just to see what they say. I’ve attended some of these seminars where they talk about buying a business with nothing out of pocket.

Stone Payton: [00:09:00] Mm hmm.

Douglas Brown: [00:09:01] One of the important things there is they don’t say nothing now. That’s not happening. Nothing out of pocket means you can razzle dazzle some ways to finance the inventory, to do some stuff where you can produce a check at the closing table that isn’t actually your money as the buyer. But the seller is not going to just turn their business over to you and let you borrow the rest of the money from them and walk away. Unless the business is just such a nightmare that they want to get rid of it. It’s kind of like having a boat. Nobody, nobody sells a boat. They give it to some other schmuck.

Stone Payton: [00:09:40] Oh, I resemble that remark. I grew up on the Gulf Coast.

Douglas Brown: [00:09:44] Yeah.

Stone Payton: [00:09:45] Oh, that’s funny. Okay, so let’s talk about the corporate guy. The corporate gal. Good career, you know, Still wants to stay there, at least during this transition period. You probably have some I don’t know if this is the right term or not absentee business, but something where I don’t have to be there Monday through Friday in the early going. Is that is that doable?

Douglas Brown: [00:10:06] If you’ve got money, anything’s doable. So, yeah, I mean, a lot of people say that the first thing that certainly we always tell them as a business broker is there’s no such thing as an absentee business if you think that you might. What would you pay to own an ATM? You know, you walk up to it, you take money out of it, and you come back when you feel like it. That would be very expensive. It is possible, of course, but you’re going to pay a lot of good money for it. And it would be a pretty good investment if you did it. But that’s not your typical business. You’re still going to have to have some hands on the owner if the owner was operating it at all. And so let’s just separate that out. If you’ve got a business that’s more than, say, three or $4 million in revenue, then they’ve got a full time professional person or two that’s actually running the place. And yeah, you can buy it as a semi absentee investor, but it’s going to cost you two or $3 million to buy that business. If you want to have an affordable business, it’s going to make the assumption that you are actually the owner operator of it and you’re going to have to do stuff.

Douglas Brown: [00:11:16] Now, you may not have to be the person that opens the shop every day and sweeps up the floor at the end of the night. But you’re going to have to be involved. The more the business can run itself, the more of a premium it’s going to command. But I would actually respond to the corporate part that we were just talking about. There’s a lot of people that come out of corporate and say, Oh, well, I have you know, I used to be a finance manager or a budget manager or contract manager. I was a line business manager, VP of 300 people. I know how to manage people well. And I can actually tell you this from my own experience, because the business that I started was a blue collar business. And I’d come out of that same corporate world, people in the kind of trades where you actually work for a living make decisions a lot differently from people that go to office and satisfy their boss for a living. Hmm. And managing people in that environment is completely different. A lot of people I talked to that are coming out of corporate world that have a chunk of money.

Douglas Brown: [00:12:16] The first thing they tell me, I don’t want to buy a franchise. Let me get this right. Now, you want to buy a business. You know nothing about an industry. You know nothing about managing people. You don’t understand. And you want to figure out how to do this by yourself so that you’re not paying the franchise or. A $50,000 fee or whatever it is. To buy a model that 1000 other people have proven works. And all you got to do is do what they do, and the least you’re going to do is a decent rate of return. But no, you know, if you don’t want to do that, then we’ll go find you at one off business. And it’s astounding the number of folks that we work with at our buyers that don’t want anything to do with franchises because they don’t want to pay that six or 7% royalty or whatever it is. And yeah, I get it. It changes the profit picture, but not really knowing how to run the business and run it into the ground is a whole lot less profit than giving somebody a 10% rate.

Stone Payton: [00:13:11] Go a minute. So you’ve been at this a while now. What? What are you finding the most rewarding, man? What’s the what’s the most fun part about the about the work for you?

Douglas Brown: [00:13:23] Well, I’m fortunate enough that I have other sources of income, so I’m not going to I’m not going to say that. Yeah, cash in the commission checks is the most exciting part, although I like to do that. But that really isn’t what it’s about for me. I really enjoy working with small business owners I like and I enjoy just seeing what they do every day. You go in and you see how these businesses operate. You see people who come in to work and are happy to work every day doing what they do in all kinds of different industries. It’s just curiosity stimulating for me as to how they work. And I really like working with these folks who have worked. For many years, try and trying to build up this business and make an asset out of it, because the sad part is almost 90% of businesses, small businesses. When the owner leaves, they get nothing. Either they don’t bother to sell it or they can’t sell it or whatever. And they’re, you know, a lifetime of something they thought that was going to be their retirement ticket turns out to be nothing. And I have that when I’m talking to folks in the back of my mind is I can’t let you retire from 20 years of this business with nothing to show for. We got to do something and figure out how to get you a reasonable return.

Stone Payton: [00:14:37] Yeah, well, talk about timeline a little bit if I have, you know, just poured my heart into this thing for 20, 30 years, and I do have my eye on exiting. Let’s talk about timeline. Timing window. I need to reach out and start having conversations with you to kind of get my ducks in a row because there are some things I need to get set up to get the most for it and have a good clean deal. Right.

Douglas Brown: [00:15:04] Right. So the answer that is now or maybe last year. Because here’s what happens. Small business owners, especially if they’re owner operators, they’re all busy, super busy and planning for the future for some day, that that could be five or ten years from now. I’m not ready to retire. I don’t have time to spend time in some ivory tower exercise coming up with an exit plan and doing all that because I got plenty of time for that. My observation has been that some day has a habit of arriving tomorrow. And to your point exactly, is there’s a ton of things I could do to make my business more valuable to a buyer. But if I did them now or over the next couple of years, wouldn’t be very expensive to do and wouldn’t disrupt the business too much and they would be possible. But if I wait until I need to sell. Those things are either super expensive to jam them in at the last minute or they’re just not possible. So. You really need to start. If you think about retiring any time in the next three or four years, you definitely need to start figuring out how that’s going to work and start doing the things you need to do to make the business more viable. If you need to retire right now, the reality is. And it may not be retired, right? It could be.

Douglas Brown: [00:16:26] You get sick, it could be somebody in the family has an issue. It could be somebody offers you a fantastic opportunity to join in with them in some new venture, but you don’t have time for it. So you need to sell the business. Could be any of those things. It’s going to take a business 3 to 4 months to close. Even if you’ve got a buyer standing there right now that actually wants to buy it. And I’ll tell you, half the people that have nothing. 90% of the people that say they want to buy a business, they never buy any business. And I can tell you in 100% of the cases where a seller is telling me, oh, I’ve got a buyer all lined up. You know, my Uncle Charlie or the guy from the my church choir or whatever, but we’ll have them show up here with a checkbook. We should be able to get a deal done in no time. You know, I don’t really need to charge you significant commission for that. We’ll cut you. We’ll cut you to get you in on the deal is if you brought us the buyer. I have never seen one of those people show up yet. Never. Yeah, you need 4 to 6 months as a minimum. If if your timeline is. I need to close this business right now, then you’re in the liquidation sale business.

Stone Payton: [00:17:31] Okay, so you’re helping clients market and sell their business. How does the whole sales and marketing thing work for you? How do you get the new interest, the new clients?

Douglas Brown: [00:17:42] Well, partly by doing things like this, which is fun, and then partly the shoe leather way where you go out and you visit businesses and drop in on them and see what they’re doing and meet the owner. We do have telemarketers. We do have mail campaigns. I don’t like the corporate and I’m not saying this about Transworld, particularly just the entire industry, the corporate telemarketer campaign, where somebody calls up a business, hey, your industry is really hot and we’ve got buyers that are waiting to buy your business at a premium price. Give us a call to that. I don’t like that. Yeah, because we don’t have a buyer like that usually. And if we do, we do. But the problem is they’ve heard it so often that there have been occasions like have a couple of buyers right now, and one guy really wants to buy automotive businesses, have another guy. And weird enough that I’m working with who is buying while in shops? I mean, what is that? Right. But that has set up a national chain. So he’s buying he’s buying shops, but they get these calls every day. So if I were to call somebody up and say, Hey, I’ve got a buyer interested in the shop, like, yeah, sure, if I click and your number goes on spam. So I don’t like that kind of thing, but it does go on. And for me, calling the business directly and talking to the owner is actually a pretty good way of doing it, but it’s pretty tedious.

Stone Payton: [00:19:04] Well, and now, I mean, you’re working Main Street, as you put it, and being affiliated with an organization, the caliber of Transworld, one of your best tools, I’m sure, is just like many of us. I mean, doing good work is an excellent sales tool, isn’t it?

Douglas Brown: [00:19:21] Yeah, Well, it especially comes in handy when you’re in the process because you have buyers and sellers and want to argue about how it needs to be done. And you know, model one is the real estate industry, which we are quite different from in some ways, but very like in other ways. Say, look, you know, you don’t argue with your real estate agent about the form that they use to do disclosures, and let’s not waste time with that. This approach that we’ve taken has worked worked for several thousand businesses a year. You’re really not going to be any different. There’s no need for you to reinvent this wheel. And that usually quiets things down, which is handy. It’s certainly handy being affiliated with transfer. I can look and see not just the stuff that’s on the Internet as far as what’s for sale, because stuff isn’t for sale and it doesn’t sell at that price. But I can actually see what we’ve done in the last couple of years, what we’ve got on the books right now, and you can get a much better sense of what a reasonable price is going to be. Then I can go look on some of those big platforms and get an idea. But I don’t know that typically businesses like that sell for two or three times earnings. But in the last two years, the best we’ve ever seen is one times earnings. That’s, you know, that’s good information to have.

Stone Payton: [00:20:33] Well, it’s great information. And I’m thinking like from my side of the table, if Lee Kantor and I, he’s my business partner. If we were getting ready to to sell all or part of business Radio X and I reach out to you, you’ve probably somewhere in that repertoire across that system, you probably have some precedent of buying or selling some types of media companies that would give me, I guess, a level of comfort. So that must be nice to be able to lean on that.

Douglas Brown: [00:21:04] It is nice. And I will say that some of the large business databases that the industry relies on, they are the best that there are out there, but they’re by no means complete. And probably 50% of the time I go in there with a small business. Obviously, you want to use those resources. I am not going to name them because no point going there. But. 50% of the time I go in there in the business I’m trying to list is not on their list of businesses that they have any data on. But if I go into the Transworld database, like you say, the odds are if we haven’t sold that kind of business. Exactly. We’ve sold something several, four or five things like it, maybe not this year, maybe four or five years ago, but at least you get an idea not of what people are asking, which doesn’t mean anything but what they’ve actually got.

Stone Payton: [00:21:53] All right, So what’s the best way for our listeners to connect with you? Have a conversation with you about any of these topics. What’s the best way for them to connect with you, man?

Douglas Brown: [00:22:02] Well, you can certainly call me on my phone anytime at 2025999996, which works pretty well if you get the nines. Right. So it’s two or 25999996. Or you can email me at DH Brown at TX world dot com.

Stone Payton: [00:22:23] Marvelous. Well, Doug, it has been an absolute pleasure having you on the program this morning. Thanks for investing the time and energy with us. And thank you for what you’re doing. The work you’re doing to me is just it’s so important. It’s so critical. It’s such a key aspect of what I think makes America great. I know I’m a little bit jaded, you know, being an entrepreneur, but being out there, helping people exit properly, helping them acquire businesses. And you’re doing important work, man. And we we sure appreciate you.

Douglas Brown: [00:22:55] Well, I appreciate what you’re doing is letting people know how the industry works and you’re not even judging them for it. That’s that’s a great service.

Stone Payton: [00:23:02] Well, it’s my pleasure. All right. Until next time, this is Stone Payton for our guest today with Transworld Business Advisors, Dr. Doug Brown and everyone here at the Business RadioX family saying we’ll see you again on Buy a Business near Me.

Intro: [00:00:07] Broadcasting live from the Business RadioX studios in Atlanta, Georgia. It’s time for Buy a Business Near Me, brought to you by the Business RadioX Ambassador Program, helping business brokers sell more local businesses. Now here’s your host.

Stone Payton: [00:00:32] Welcome to another exciting and informative edition of Buy a Business Near Me. Stone Payton here with you this afternoon. You guys are in for a real treat. Please join me in welcoming to the broadcast with Transworld Business Advisors. Mr. Eric Mendelsohn Good afternoon, sir.

Eric Mendelsohn: [00:00:52] Thank you, Stone. Pleasure to be here.

Stone Payton: [00:00:54] Well, we’re glad to have you on the show. Man where are you calling in from today?

Eric Mendelsohn: [00:00:58] I am in the Big Apple, New York City.

Stone Payton: [00:01:02] All right. So tell us a little bit before we dive into deep, can you give us sort of a State of the Union man? What’s what’s what’s the arena like right now?

Eric Mendelsohn: [00:01:13] Yeah. So I am a business broker with travel business advisors. We are the largest business brokerage, so we’ve access to a lot of great data out there. What’s going on in the current market as far as the main street and lower mid-market. So we’re seeing a lot of activity right now out there. It’s busy. I know the amount of closings we’re having as a firm is up by over 33% compared to this time last year. We have a lot of deals right now that are going into contract. A lot of intense out there. You know, last year was also a very good year for activity. But even more so based upon where I am here in the New York City region, we were certainly impacted very hard by COVID and by the crime wave last winter. And so that’s certainly took a bite out of the business sales market. But now, for the first time in a long time, we seem to be past COVID, which is great, and businesses are really selling and people are getting turned off to real estate due to the high rates and they want to buy business instead. So it’s it’s a great time for someone to want to sell their business.

Stone Payton: [00:02:37] So is getting ready to sell a business or selling a business getting any easier? And maybe I guess that sort of tells you that that in my mind, there’s a lot to it.

Eric Mendelsohn: [00:02:50] Right? Well, the word easier, I think that that’s not maybe the best word for it. I think that if a business owner is prepared and well educated, we have a lot of data about exactly where a business should be priced. And if you price a well, you price it to be sold in a business where there’s lots of buyers for for example, carwash is a very hot liquor. Stores are always very hot and they do manufacturing. It’s a hot business. Anything medical related. So you price a business one of those industries, well, it’s going to sell. And so it’s just letting the business owner know in education about where exactly their business should be priced in order for it to sell.

Stone Payton: [00:03:44] So what’s your back story, man? How did you get into this line of work?

Eric Mendelsohn: [00:03:48] Yes. So I mean, that’s a good question. It’s a bit of a long story, but I’ll give you the short answer. So my first career wasn’t in financial services. I was working for an investment bank, and after that I went back to graduate school, got my MBA, and then I came out of graduate school and I just couldn’t find a job. It was after the 2008 recession, and so I started doing residential real estate part time, and I saw that I liked it. I saw that I enjoyed sales, and I started doing that full time and really being here in Manhattan, New York City, you either learn the business very fast or you don’t. And you’re getting such high pass fail rate of people who can actually make it and make it a career. And so for nine years straight, I did residential real estate full time and that really gave me all that sell expertise, really honed my skills in marketing and sales and in 2018, 2019 start to become a very tough real estate market. And so I was just trying to look for other opportunities to make myself more diverse. And I heard the term business broker and I’m like, What’s that? And the more I heard about it, the more I thought that, Wow, this is something I can really excel at. Because in order to be successful at this, you need to do two things. First of all, be very good at sales. Second thing, I’m have very good business financial acumen, which is certainly what I have for my first career. So if you have both of those things, I think in business sales you’ll be a home run. And I just decided to branch out a couple of years ago and I sold this company called Transworld, and they were the biggest business, biggest business brokerage out there. And I said, All right, let me give them a try. And I was also very pleased about the education they give to new agents. So that’s what made me start this career.

Stone Payton: [00:05:47] All right. So walk us through the process, if you would. Broad strokes any way, and I’ll give you an example or you can pick a different one. But I own 40% of a company, the business radio network. My business partner owns the other 60%. If we were to reach out to you and we said, Hey, we’re ready to exit on this thing, what are what are some major steps in the in the process that you would kind of help us walk through?

Eric Mendelsohn: [00:06:13] Sure. So there are, of course, a number of areas, I think, that business owners make and then rehearse them when it comes time for a sale. First of all, if the business is really the owner, maybe you have your name attached to the business, could be maybe Smith Burgers and you know, you’re the you’re in charge of the burger shop, for example. It really hurts the sale because buyers say, Oh, how can I replicate what that owner is doing? And they say, well, there’s no way possible. And then if a buyer feels that, they’re going to say, Well, the business is not worth the amount of money, you’re asking for it. So it’s as I say, a good rule of thumb is what happens to the business if you’re away for a week, if you’re work for two weeks, does the business crumble? Do you have to be on your phone all day or can the business run effectively with you away? If it can, then that’s great. So ideally you want to really have some sort of manager in place. There was going to stay after the sale. That really adds comfort to buyers. So that’s the first major step that I would take. The second major step is you want to have really great books and records. That means all the cash is on the books. That means you’re documenting everything. So a lot of time. A business owner will charge personal expenses to the business. It’s called an add back. So basically we add that back because basically the reason why business owners do that is they want to they want to maximize their deductions on their on their return. So. You want to make sure that those those are valid add backs when it comes up to sell the business. So you want to have everything documented. So maybe you charge yourself into the business, maybe you charge some parking or tolls or gas or your health insurance. So all of that you want to document. So it’s very important to have really great documentation.

Stone Payton: [00:08:28] Well, that first thing you said about being away in the business still run effectively. Those are very encouraging words for me because it seems like every time I step away, everything just clicks. It does better. I should go on vacation more often, but I know it makes a lot of sense. Benefits. If it’s so heavily dependent on the individual, then yeah, it makes sense that that would definitely impact the market value. I think I know the answer to this, but I’m going to ask it anyway. Do you find that at least initially, often business owners have an inflated sense of the actual market value of their enterprise?

Eric Mendelsohn: [00:09:06] Yes. So great question. And I would say yes, I would say pretty much 90% of business owners have that perception. And that is why you see the results that basically less than one in five businesses posted for sale nationally actually sell. And that’s staggering. I think it’s about 17% is the official number that I’ve seen quoted. And the reason for that is because whether it is trying to sell the business on their own or they hire a broker, if they’re hiring a broker, the broker is not giving them the right information, the right education about where the business should be sold. And that’s the thing that I do that I bring to the table. And that’s why we sell businesses and get them sold. Not just list is because we have those numbers and that’s what we present to a seller when we are going to beat them.

Stone Payton: [00:10:05] So what I’m envisioning here, and maybe you have it all in house, or maybe you just have this really tight network of best in class advisors. But I’m envisioning you as almost like the quarterback of my cell team. So like you would bring in someone that can do valuation, the CPA type person, is that is that accurate or is it how does that piece were?

Eric Mendelsohn: [00:10:27] Yes. So I do refer to myself as the broker, as being the quarterback of the deal. I need to certainly read the deal to where it needs to go. We need to be the seller to where they want to go. And we need to basically be the CPA or the attorney to make sure get everyone onto the same page when obstacles happen or could be. Also, the lender to lenders are obviously involved in a lot of our deals also. So that’s kind of how we kind of lead read the deal. But yes, we are, I would say essentially the quarterback of the transaction.

Stone Payton: [00:11:05] So yeah, talk a little bit about not just lending but this, this, this whole idea of structuring the deal because I’m beginning to learn because I’ve now done a few of these interviews with people in your general space. It’s you can get kind of creative. There’s there’s more than one way to structure a deal, right?

Eric Mendelsohn: [00:11:25] Correct. So a few ways a deal gets done. First of all, a deal can get done all cash. Obviously, sellers love that. But actually very few of our deals get done on cash because less buyers can afford to pay all cash. The second way I would say the most common way we do deals is with seller financing. So essentially what that is, is the seller becomes the bank. So basically, for example, let’s say the business saw price is $1,000,000 buyer will put down, possibly half down and then half in seller financing. So that gets paid back usually over a few years with interest. And so there are some tax benefits to that, too, as far as deferring gains and buyers like that, because then the seller stays involved in the business. They want to see the seller succeed because they have payments coming to them every month. So buyers really do like it and it is easier to get done. Then the other alternative, which is bank financing, so that would be the SBA financing, which is of course common. And in this case the seller gets paid in full at the closing, but it just takes a while to get done. And banks obviously are getting, I think, a little more conservative as far as their lending, because obviously there’s talk about maybe we’re headed into a recession. So so certainly bank lending for the banks can certainly bring some complexities into it. So that’s why more of our deals get done with seller financing than with the other options.

Stone Payton: [00:13:10] So if you’re a layperson like me and candidly probably a lot of our listeners, how would you shop for a business broker? What are the characteristics you’re looking for? What kind of questions should should we be asking?

Eric Mendelsohn: [00:13:26] Yes. So great question. So first of all, what is their marketing plan? Where do they advertise which which website? So there’s a number of websites on there that are out there that are online, that post business listings. That’s the first thing. Second thing, what are you going to do to capture buyers who are not on their what’s your marketing plan? So that’s the second thing. Third thing, how big is your firm and do you Colebrook with other agents. So Colebrook is a real estate term and means do you work with buyers agents. So unfortunately business brokerage. I come from a real I come from real estate and real estate. There’s you, Colebrook. You belong to these organizations, you know, like like National Association of Realtors or your local real estate board. And so you Colebrook with other brokers and this is brokerage, unfortunately, it’s like the wild, wild west where there is no brokerage in many, many states. So most of our competitors do not go broke, do not book with buyer’s agents. They only do things in the house. And so if when a seller is listing their business with an agent who does not. Colebrook They’re really hurting themselves and the amount of money they can get for the business at Transworld. This is why I joined Transworld is because Transworld does go broke. We work with any agents, whether it be externally or internally and locally. Here in New York we have a nice team of about 20 agents. So not only is someone hiring me, but they’re hiring our whole entire team. And that’s super, super important. It makes us different.

Stone Payton: [00:15:09] So what’s the more challenging or is it just two sides of the same coin? Is it is it building relationships with with buyers or or finding sellers or is it just to. Yeah. What is one more challenging than the other?

Eric Mendelsohn: [00:15:25] Well, I think it’s a combination of both. I think the first thing is, obviously, there’s good sellers and there’s bad sellers. So bad sellers certainly are not realistic with the price. This inflated value are not responsive. When you’re working with a seller, your team, you know, unlike real estate where you just show up property for the most part and you just walk in and and there’s very few there’s very few items that you actually need the help of the seller and business sales. There’s so much information, there’s a lot of specific questions that only the seller would know about the business. So you really need a seller who’s going to be responsive because if not, then buyers lost interest if they don’t hear back within a fast period. But also you do want to find good buyers. And so that’s why it’s important to have a broker who is going to platform was going to list the business under a different platform where capturing a lot of different buyers depending upon the price of the business.

Stone Payton: [00:16:29] And does it largely localize like you do in most of your work in the New York area? Or are you subject to to help broker a deal in Austin, Texas? What’s that aspect of the business look like?

Eric Mendelsohn: [00:16:41] A good question. I can certainly help anywhere. That’s I mean, whether it’s anywhere across the nation, I do concentrate on businesses in New York City metropolitan area, whether that be New York, New Jersey, Connecticut. But I could help anywhere. So much of what we’re doing these days is over. Is over. Zoom anyway and zoom in the phone. Yeah. So it’s very little these days. We’re doing in person anyway and certainly we always want to maintain the confidentiality of the business. This is very important to us. So I’m not going to be walking in there every day with bars anyway because then they close it or No, something’s up. So. So I could help anywhere. And we do have offices, of course, all around the nation. So if it was a business that required more in-person hand-holding, then certainly that’s something obviously we can do and we have great resources here at Transworld.

Stone Payton: [00:17:41] Well, I suspect just the fact that you guys are so well known and that you do good work is probably your best sales and marketing tool. But I’m always interested how does the whole sales and marketing thing work for you guys? At the moment? I’m not talking about helping me sell my business, but I’m talking about you. Like, how do you get to go to market and have a conversations with somebody like me and lead, you know, a few years from now when we’re ready.

Eric Mendelsohn: [00:18:09] Right? So, you know, I always say it’s never too early to have a conversation and to talk to any business owner out there saying, oh, maybe I want to sell a couple of years. Well, you know, the right time to really prepare for the sale is now, not in three years. If you start running the business like you’re selling the business tomorrow, I guarantee your business is going to do better because you’re going to do the right things. You’re going to invest in the right in in the right approach. You’re going to make sure your reviews on social media are great. You’re going to make sure your website looks good. So these are all things that can help your business right now and certainly down the line that buyers are going to want to see. So I think this is very important to really contact someone like myself and see what it is that you can do better.

Stone Payton: [00:18:58] What a great point. I mean. Yeah, I mean, just beginning to work with a business broker just to help you get your ducks in a row. I mean, that’s just that’s just good mojo. That’s a that’s a technical term. You’re welcome to borrow if you want, Eric. But no, that makes all the sense in the world. Hey, listen, before we wrap, I’d love to leave our listeners with a few pro tips, a few things, actionable things. I mean, number one, pro tip, reach out and talk to Eric if you want to have a conversation. But maybe some things they can begin thinking about reading and I don’t know, buyers, sellers, whatever you think would be helpful. But I’d love to leave him with with a handful of pro tips if we could.

Eric Mendelsohn: [00:19:39] Right. So as far as the number tips to both buyers and sellers, as I just said to a seller, one obviously have an agent who’s educated, who who has comps, who shows up, prepare, you know, and that’s also and there’s also wanting to push back to you on on the price and listen to an honest assessment of where the value for your business should be. Because like I said, the odds are that your business will not sell to buyers. I think it’s important to understand the process, to understand the timeline for buying a business, how that how that works. If you’ve never bought a business before, it can be very stressful. So it’s important to have someone on your side to have have a broker on your side. Certainly selling a business is similar to selling a. Selling real estate and buying real estate is similar in to the business sells part of it and that there’s no charge for my services for I’m a buyer so I never listings at Transworld. So that’s why I would suggest to certainly use a broker like myself.

Stone Payton: [00:20:51] All right. So if someone wants to reach out and have a conversation with you or someone on your team, ideally so that they can avoid the 80% of businesses that apparently don’t sell and would like to learn more about these topics. What’s the best way for them to connect with you? Whatever you think is appropriate? Email, LinkedIn website. I just want to make sure that they can get connected with you to further this conversation.

Eric Mendelsohn: [00:21:15] Yeah. Thank you. So so my LinkedIn is Eric Mendelson, me and DDL. So look me up on LinkedIn also Eric Mendelson on LinkedIn. On Instagram or my cell phone. 5168403516. Feel free to get in call.

Stone Payton: [00:21:35] Well, Eric, thanks for being on the show. Man, this has been very informative. A pieces of it. It’s kind of sobering. That 17% statistic was a little bit sobering. But, you know, one more reason to seek out someone with specialized knowledge and expertise to to coach you through this, guys. Eric, thanks so much for investing the time to to visit with us this afternoon.

Eric Mendelsohn: [00:21:59] Thank you, Stone. Really appreciate the call.

Stone Payton: [00:22:04] Absolutely. All right. This is Stone Payton for our guest today, Eric Mendelson with Trans World Business Advisors and everyone here at the Business Radio X family saying we’ll see you next time on Buy a Business Near Me.