Most M&A Deal Fail. Do You Know How To Succeed and Prosper? (#105)

[00:00] Introduction Welcome to the Sell My Business Podcast. I'm your host Jeffrey Feldberg. 

This podcast is brought to you by Deep Wealth and the 90-day Deep Wealth Experience. 

Your liquidity event is the largest and most important financial transaction of your life. 

But unfortunately, up to 90% of liquidity events fail. Think about all that time, money and effort wasted. Of the "successful" liquidity events, most business owners leave anywhere from 50% to over 100% of their deal value in the buyer's pocket and don't even know it.

I should know. I said no to a seven-figure offer and yes, to mastering the art and science of a liquidity event. Two years later, I said yes to a different buyer with a nine-figure offer. 

Are you thinking about an exit or liquidity event? 

If you believe that you either don't have the time or you'll prepare closer to your liquidity event, think again. 

Don't become a statistic and make the fatal mistake of believing that the skills that built your business are the same ones for your liquidity event. 

After all, how can you master something you've never done before? 

Let the 90-day Deep Wealth Experience and our nine-step roadmap of preparation help you capture the maximum value for your liquidity event. 

At the end of this episode, take a moment to hear from business owners, just like you, who went through the Deep Wealth Experience. 

[00:01:44] Jeffrey Feldberg: Welcome to episode 105 of the Sell My Business Podcast. This episode is a solo one in which we'll take a look at a key question around liquidity events. And here's my question for you. Most mergers and acquisitions fail. Do you know how to succeed and prosper?

After all. Your liquidity event this is the single largest, most important financial decision of a lifetime. You have one chance to get it right. And you better make it count.

Unfortunately, the statistics tell us otherwise. And in fact, the statistics are absolutely terrible. Up to 90% of liquidity events fail. And of the quote-unquote successful liquidity events, most business owners are leaving anywhere from 50% to over 100% of the deal value in the buyer's pocket. And insult to injury most business owners have no idea how much money they left on the table.

So let's look at five key areas of why mergers and acquisitions fail. And let's talk about the strategies that you can deploy to protect yourself. So area number one, and this will be strategy number one. Mergers and acquisitions fail because business owners aren't prepared for the post-exit life.

Now you heard that correctly. We're not going to talk about preparation. We're going to talk about preparation or the lack of it in strategy. Number five. But many mergers and acquisitions fail because the business owner hasn't thought about life after the liquidity event. So let's do a quick thought experiment. I want you to imagine for a moment that you had a liquidity event of a lifetime.

Your liquidity event went off without a hitch. It was even bigger than you expected. You're no longer involved in the business. With all the additional capital that you now have, you bought all your toys, you got that out of the system, and you're now traveling around the world. But you're not just traveling around the world in any style. You're traveling around the world first-class.

You are staying in the absolute best hotels. You're traveling in style. You're in the most exotic locations. And now I want you to imagine you're on the beach and as you're sipping on your pina colada, you're looking around the beach, and truth be told. You can't tell this beach from the other beach.

In fact, when you woke up this morning, you couldn't even tell what hotel you're in. They all look the same. So as you're on the beach, you're thinking now what? And the now what question is my absolute favorite question in this situation.

And believe it or not in the 90-day Deep Wealth Experience before we even begin. We have our business owners ask the now what question? And then now, what question is this.

What are you going to do for the rest of your life?

After your travels are over and you get back home. How are you going to keep yourself fulfilled? How are you going to keep yourself happy? After all, the goal of life is to optimize happiness. But for most business owners, the post-exit life it doesn't lead to the happily ever after that they were hoping for.

The business owner is the business and the business is the business owner. As far as the business owner is concerned the sun, the moon, the stars, the entire universe revolves around that one business owner. And we'll talk all about this in some of the future strategies because there are major problems when the business doesn't run without you.

But let's focus back on this one with the post-exit life. The issue is that all of your activities revolved around the business. You know, by the day, the week, the month, the quarter, and the year what you're going to be doing. All the rituals in your life revolved around the business. And chances are the people that you call friends are either employees of yours or clients. So when you sell your business, you have the liquidity event go through. The merger and acquisition is successful. You have something called a non-compete.

For most business owners the non-compete period is anywhere from three years to five years in length. And during that time period, you cannot operate within the industry. In fact, even socializing with employees and clients it's typically prohibited in your non-compete. So now, what are you going to do?

And the truth is nobody is going to feel sorry for you when you're at home in your pajamas, all these zeros in the bank, but you're bored out of your mind and nobody has the time to come out and play with you. So what happens? What can you do in this situation?

Well, now is the time to begin preparing for your post-exit life. And one of the things that you should be asking yourself outside of the business is what are other activities that have you feeling energized that you enjoy doing? It's these activities that you could do day in, day out. They'll have you feeling happy, they'll have you feeling engaged in life and this is where you want to be.

And I know what you may be thinking. You're saying, hey, Jeffrey, that sounds great. But I'm so busy in the business. I don't have the time. Where am I going to be able to do these kinds of activities or even have this kind of exploration? Well, either you do this now, or you do this later, but you definitely want to do this now.

Because when you do this now, the post-exit life becomes a much easier transition for you.

Everything that I've said it shouldn't be surprising that some liquidity events fail because right at the finish line, the business owner says, okay, this business is going to be sold. But what am I going to do now? What am I going to do for the rest of my life?

That becomes a major problem. And more times than not what business owners will do is they will fabricate excuses of why to stop the deal dead in his tracks. And imagine all of that time, that preparation, and that money for your liquidity event. It's now all wasted because you've effectively killed the deal.

So what you can start doing right away is again, think about where you want to be and what you want to be doing after the liquidity event. And as the saying goes, money does not buy happiness. Yes, money can and does make life a whole lot better, but it's not going to fulfill you. It's not going to give you that happiness.

While you're running the business your mission is to go on an exploration. And the exploration is all about you. You're going to find activities that resonate with you. Perhaps you'll find activities that don't. What you want to find our interests and hobbies and activities that you can do in the post-exit life that keep you fulfilled that keep you feeling happy.

Again, all the money, all the accolades, all the success in the world means, absolutely nothing. If you don't have fulfillment. Said in another way. Success without fulfillment is a failure. So strategy number one is preparing well in advance for the post-exit life. And I'll share a very quick story for you before we go on to strategy number two.

As you know, I had an incredibly successful liquidity event. It was a nine-figure exit for myself and my business partners. But like most business owners, I was so focused on the business. I was so focused on getting the liquidity event across the finish line to do whatever it took that I didn't take the time to prepare for the post-exit life.

The early days of my post-exit life were challenging for me. Truth be told I did not find the happily ever after that I hoped I would, I wasn't equipped with the tools and the activities to really keep me on the right path.

And in fact, when I look back on my life, some of the biggest mistakes that I made came after my liquidity event. Believe it or not. What's interesting about this is I just had no idea of what to expect. You don't learn this. You don't read about this. Most people don't talk to you about this, but it's such an important lesson and strategy that when business owners start the 90-day Deep Wealth Experience and our 9-step roadmap one of the very first things that we do even before we begin is we talk about the post-exit life and the importance to prepare for it. And, you know, if you want to go in-depth on this topic, episode 100 of the Sell My Business Podcast is all about Steve Wells and myself, and in particular, Steve does a deep dive on the changes that he's now recently made in his life that he says, had he done this even before the liquidity event it would've made life that much better for him.

I'll put a link to episode 100 in the show notes. So again, mergers and acquisitions fail because business owners aren't prepared for the post-exit life. And you now know that you need to begin to prepare for the post-exit life. So that's strategy number one.

Let's go on to area number two where most mergers and acquisitions fail because you're leaving everything to your liquidity event advisors. And this is now strategy number two. A lot of times what most business owners will do is be at either extreme. At the one extreme, they're doing too much. They're getting in the way of the liquidity event advisors. But in this case, on the opposite side, you're not involved enough. You know, your advisors as good as they are they all have their own agenda. And more times than not their agenda is not in alignment with your agenda. One of the things that we do in the Deep Wealth Experience this is part of the 9-step roadmap. We talk all about step number six, your advisory team.

And in step number six for your advisory team in the Deep Wealth Experience, you come out with a whole list of questions and scorecards of what you should be asking advisors to make sure that you can find an advisor with the best cultural fit, where you have a chemistry where things are going to go well.

But even when you do that, even when you find an advisor with a terrific fit and you have the chemistry. There are certain things that you need to be doing to ensure that you're successful, that the liquidity event is successful. Abdication or withdrawing yourself from the process typically leads to terrible results in your liquidity event. In fact what happens for most business owners when they're right at the finish line and because they haven't been involved in the process, they've left everything to the advisors they're taking a look at what the deal looks like and what it's going to mean.

And it's not the best deal. They have failed to capture the best deal. And instead, they're going to get any deal. And just like before with the now what question, what am I going to do with the rest of my life? In this scenario, the business owner may kill the deal. And again, all that time, all that effort, that money. It's wasted. It's all for not. You were better off not doing anything. All because you did not take responsibility for yourself to ensure that you're involved in the liquidity event process.

So what can you do? What strategy can you follow to protect yourself from this particular scenario?

Well before your liquidity event is to create a narrative. What's the narrative for your business? What's the narrative for the liquidity event. Why are you having this? And embedded in that narrative are the goals that you want to achieve both in the liquidity event, but also outside of the liquidity event.

And one of the things that we focus a lot on in the Deep Wealth Experience is the 9-step roadmap. Is how do you create an effective narrative?

As an example in step number three your future buyer you learn how to create an effective narrative. The narrative is compelling. The narrative is powerful. And after hearing the narrative, your future buyer is not only excited about the business but your enterprise value has increased as a result of the narrative because the buyer is excited about a promising, a thriving, and prosperous tomorrow as a result of what you've done with the narrative.

Well, it's no different with your liquidity event. Your narrative for your advisors must be created well in advance to help you ensure that your advisors are on the same page as you. One of the challenges with advisors as good as they may be most advisors are operating in their own silo.

And you have a situation where the advisors just want to get the deal done. No advisor wants to have a deal go off the rails or become a failure. So advisors will get the deal done no matter what. But again, you're not after any deal you want to capture the absolute best deal. So it's a fine balance. You can't be too involved and micromanage your advisors.

But at the same time, you can't abdicate yourself from the process either. So it's finding the right balance where you're involved with your advisors. Your advisors know your narrative, what you want, what you don't want. Also referring back to step number three, the future buyer. You've created your deal points and your no-fly zones. And these are very important areas on the one hand with deal points you're talking about what absolutely must be in the deal.

And on the other hand with the no-fly zones, you're talking about what cannot be in the deal, no matter what. If any of your no-fly zones are in the deal, you're prepared to stop speaking with that buyer and move on to another buyer.

So when it comes to your liquidity event you must absolutely prepare your advisors for what you want. You must ensure that you're finding the right involvement with your advisors. Not too much, but not too little, but you're there every step of the way. And yes, you're running the business. Yes. You're having a liquidity event, but you must strike that harmony to ensure that you're not capturing any deal. But you're absolutely capturing the best deal. So mergers and acquisitions fail when you leave everything to your liquidity event advisors. And the strategy here is to ensure that you blend in with your advisors and the liquidity event.

That there are no surprises for you that you're informed every step of the way. Yes, you're trusting your advisors, but you're taking a trust but verify kind of approach. So what's the third area where most mergers and acquisitions fail?

The third area is to know that the currency of your buyer is trust and not money. That's so important. Let me say that one more time. The currency of your buyer is trust and not money. And that trust is trust in you and your team.

When a buyer is looking at your opportunity, your liquidity event you need to know that you're not the only game in town. Your future buyer has many, many options to look at. Your liquidity event happens to be one of them. And from a buyer's point of view, and again, in step number three of the 9-step roadmap in the 90-day Deep Wealth Experience, you learn the art. Of how to think like a buyer. And when you master the art of thinking like a buyer, what you understand is that a buyer will look to minimize risk at all costs. A buyer will take a pass on one deal and go to another deal if that deal has lower risk.

And why does a buyer want lower risk? The short answer is a buyer wants lower risk because it means a higher return on investment. Like you, your buyer is in business to be in business. And your buyer doesn't want to just get the capital back of what it took to purchase your business. Your future buyer wants a very high return on investment.

Obviously the higher, the better. So, how do you start to develop trust with the buyer? What does that look like? Well, for starters, where most business owners miss the mark. This is what we spoke about earlier. Most business owners miss the mark because they have a weak management team. Or in some cases, there's no management team at all. So in other words, the business does not run without you.

Why would a buyer walk away from your deal if the business doesn't run without you. The buyer knows that at one point in time after the deal closes, you'll no longer be in the business. Now I know what you may be thinking. Well, wait a minute, Jeffrey.

I actually plan to stay in the business. Well, maybe you will, maybe you won't, but your future buyer is smart and sophisticated and experienced. And your future buyer also knows that once a deal closes, once you have all those zeros in your bank account your motivation, isn't going to be the same.

Your future buyer is assuming that once a deal is done, you're no longer there. So if you have a weak management team or no management team at all you have no deal. So the first thing that you can do to begin the process of establishing trust with the buyer is to demonstrate that your business does run without you. Your business doesn't need you. You have a successful, smart, and talented management team who runs the business day-to-day.

One of the other areas that most business owners tend to overlook is that when you're running the liquidity event part of the projections that you give your future buyer will actually occur during the liquidity event itself. So when you put your projections together, heaven forbid if you miss your numbers, one of two things is going to happen.

Number one, the enterprise value of your business gets penalized. Or number two, your future buyer walks away from the deal. Neither situation is desired and neither situation is a good one. And when you miss your numbers, the future buyer is thinking, well, if you told me that you would hit the numbers here, but you didn't, well, obviously you lied to me, and if you're lying to me here, where else have you not told me the truth? And it's really the beginning of the end.

When you're putting your numbers together avoid the trap that some buyers will put in front of you. There are all different kinds of buyers. Most buyers are good, but some buyers will deliberately try and tempt you. They'll feed your ego and they'll try and get you to put projections out there that they know you're going to miss.

And why they're doing that is they want to put you in a position of weakness where they can decide to either walk away from the deal, or if they do decide to move forward, it will be at a much lower price for them. So avoid that when you're putting your projections together. I know that you absolutely 100% must meet those numbers.

One strategy that you can consider. And there's a little bit of a risk here, but one strategy that you can consider is to under-promise and over-deliver. Now I know what you may be thinking. Well, wait a minute, Jeffrey, when I put these projections together, If I under promised doesn't that mean that I'm going to have a lower enterprise value for the business?

And as a result, I'm going to walk away with less? Well, yes, that is a possible risk. But let's look at the flip side. If you under-promise and over-deliver. So not only have you met your numbers, but in all likelihood, you've exceeded your numbers. Two important things happen. Number one. You've established a tremendous amount of trust with your buyer.

Your buyer is thinking. Wow. Not only were these numbers met, but they were exceeded. This owner really knows what's going on with the business and the second thing that's going to come out of that is your enterprise value is going to increase.

One of the things that we talk a lot about in the Deep Wealth Experience is having a liquidity event that takes place in an auction. So this is where you have multiple buyers at the same time, going through a competitive process. When you exceed your numbers, you create excitement around your business.

And you now have options amongst buyers and your buyer knows that. You always have the choice to stop your discussions with that one buyer and move on to the next buyer. And you send a very strong message to all the buyers that if you don't get what you're looking for, you're simply going to stop and move on to the next buyer. And just like you, your future buyer hates to lose.

And just like you, your future buyer loves to win. So when you under promise and over deliver you set yourself up for success. You give yourself a little bit of wiggle room, just in case something does happen that you can still meet your numbers, and hopefully when you do everything right, you'll exceed your numbers. And you're the benefactor of that.

So again, know the currency of your buyer is trust and not money. And in developing that trust with your buyer, you're ensuring that you're hitting your numbers and that the business does run without you. So that's the third area of where most mergers and acquisitions fail. You now know what you need to do to make sure that you can succeed and prosper. And that's building trust with the buyer because trust is the currency.

Let's talk about the fourth area of where mergers and acquisitions fail because mergers and acquisitions fail when business owners are selfish.

One of the fatal mistakes that business owners make is that they think like owners, instead of thinking like a buyer. They're only looking at what's good for them. But when you think about this for a moment, when you started your business, go back to the very beginning were you selfish?

Chances are you were thinking of your prospective client. How can you help them? What's their problem? How can you take that pain away? And it's the same thing when it comes to your liquidity event and buyers.

Again, going back to step number three of the 9-step roadmap, your future buyer in step number three, you are mastering the art of thinking like a buyer. And as I mentioned earlier, what a buyer wants to see is how risk at all costs can be minimized. So even before you start your liquidity event when you're thinking about your narrative when you're looking at your business. You're looking at all the areas where there's risk and how you can actually remove that risk. And you want to do this for a couple of reasons. In helping the buyer, you're helping yourself. The less risk that you have, the higher, the enterprise value.

And that's why step number four of the 9-step roadmap an internal due diligence audit. That's really at the heart of preparation. And we talk a lot about that in the Deep Wealth Experience. Smart and successful business owners before hiring an investment banker before going into market with a liquidity event, perform an internal due diligence audit to ensure that they find the skeletons in the closet and remove them. Remember every skeleton that's there can cost you the deal or it's going to lower your enterprise value. But the second thing that you're doing is you're finding those hidden Rembrandts in the attic and you're putting them out for public display.

Those hidden Rembrandts those are things that you're world-class and it makes your business unique. You may not think that you're unique, but when you do a deep dive and we do this through the Deep Wealth experience, you begin to appreciate and identify all of your Rembrandts that you can put out for public display.

Because remember when you're creating your narrative, what your future buyer wants to hear when you're thinking like a buyer, your narrative, both shows and tells the future buyer, why there's a bright and prosperous future with a very high ROI waiting for that buyer.

When you master the art of thinking like a buyer you figure out what the problems are of a future buyer. And how your business can solve those problems.

Through your narrative, the better that you can demonstrate with facts, data, and stories why your business solves that problem for your future buyer the higher your enterprise value. Remember your buyer didn't show up for a random reason. Your buyer shows up because your buyer has a problem that they believe you can solve. And when you master the art of thinking like a buyer through your Rembrandt's, through your narrative, you can expand your buyer's thinking into how your business will help your buyer solve that problem.

 I'm going to share something that's a little bit controversial. People make decisions based on emotion first and they justify it with logic later. This becomes important for your liquidity event. One of the things that I tell business owners stop comparing yourself to your competition when it comes to enterprise value. It doesn't matter that your competition had a certain multiple for their liquidity event.

Your mission when you're creating your narrative is to put yourself into your own unique category. And in that category, you're number one. Number two doesn't exist. And they're not even close to you. When you create a narrative that demonstrates why you're in your own category the sky is the limit in terms of what you can do for that enterprise value. When your buyer becomes excited from your narrative and the category that you've created let your buyer decide the enterprise value because they will not be comparing it to your competition. When you've demonstrated how you're different, why you're different, and you have the data and facts to do that, you're really in a league of your own.

Here's a quick story for you. When my e-learning company Embanet went for its liquidity event, we created our own category. In a nutshell, what we presented to the buyer was that we are world-class. We are the best at not only filling the seats with online learners but keeping those seats filled. And we had all the data, the narrative, the stories, all the facts that went into supporting that. So we created our own category. And because we created that category that we were number one in it, and we could back that up and we mastered the art of thinking like a buyer the enterprise value that we received was much higher because we put ourselves in a league of our own. There were no other comparables. We painted a picture of a very bright and prosperous future. The buyer saw that we expanded the buyer's thinking. And as a quick side note, we're very proud of the fact that the new owners of Embanet, they went on to have their own liquidity event and they did very, very well. So it was a win-win all the way around.

So know that most mergers and acquisitions fail because business owners are selfish and you now have a strategy of mastering the art of thinking like a buyer where you're minimizing the risk to really help yourself and help the buyer at the same time.

So now let's go to the fifth and final area of why most mergers and acquisitions fail. Mergers and acquisitions fail from a lack of preparation. Now, where do I begin on this topic? Because this is everything that Deep Wealth and the Deep Wealth Experience is all about with our 9-step roadmap. Fact of the matter is most business owners do not prepare for their liquidity event.

Preparation for most business owners is simply showing up to an investment banker. Here I am. Let's go to market. And the investment banker takes you to market. And guess what? Congratulations. You now have a second full-time job known as the liquidity event. What most business owners don't realize when they don't prepare ahead of time, they are now sacrificing their money, their health, and their time.

Because while running the business full time. You and your team are now forced to have all these late evenings, early mornings, weekdays, weeknights weekends where you're trying to do the impossible. You're trying to get all these reports done. You're trying to deal with all these skeletons that are coming up, that you don't have the time to properly address. And so what happens is you and the team quickly become burnt out. So there goes your health. There goes your time.

And you have no choice, but to bring in very expensive outside consultants to do the work that you should have done. Well, there goes your money. The power of preparation. It's the gift that keeps on giving. As I mentioned before, step number four of the 9-step roadmap due diligence this is incredibly powerful when you perform an internal due diligence audit well, before we liquidity event,

And in the Deep Wealth Experience, we walk you through how you do an internal due diligence audit. Who do you reach out to for help? What that should look like? How do you go about doing that? And often what comes out of that are two key areas.

When you're performing your internal due diligence audit you'll identify a few areas of weakness. For most business owners well, I don't know how to tell the CEO, so I'll just call it as it is your business model sucks. And Hey, don't get offended by that at Embanet our very first business model was not great.

But what you can do through preparation is you can work on your business model to take it from being terrible, to have it being great. There are three areas in a business model that a buyer looks for that really increase the enterprise value. We talk all about that in the Deep Wealth Experience and in other episodes, I've gone into a lot of details about that, but know that when you take the time to prepare through an internal due diligence audit, you can improve your business model.

You're also taking a look at your management team. And if you remember trust, trust is the currency of a buyer. If you have a weak management team, when you prepare well in advance you can improve your management team. You can fill out positions that might be missing. You can perhaps replace people that shouldn't be on the team in the first place.

So when you do the internal due diligence audit effectively, you're doing two things. Number one, you're finding and removing those skeletons in the closet. And your buyer is going to love you for that because while you're doing that, you've minimized the risk. And when you remove the skeletons, the other thing that you're doing.

Are you're ensuring that you're in the market for a shorter period of time. You've done the due diligence you've done as an example, the quality of earnings report. All the things that the buyer would normally have to do. You've done for the buyer well in advance and ahead of time, but you've done it on your terms on your time.

And the advantage of that, particularly when you're in a competitive process is that you can tell the buyer, hey, we've already done this. There's no need for you to do it. Here's the result. Ask us any questions that you want, let's keep moving forward.

And when you're in the marketplace for a shorter period of time you win because speed always wins when you're having a liquidity event. Nobody knows what tomorrow will bring. The shorter period of time that you're in the marketplace, the better off you're going to be.

So the big takeaway here is prepare. Now you may be asking jeffrey, how long does preparation take before I'm in a position to hire an investment banker and have a liquidity event? Well, the short answer is it depends. It really depends on you and your management team. Now the wonderful thing about preparation is you can go about it at your own time, at your own pace.

For some business owners, preparation can take nine months. For other business owners, it can take two years. Generally speaking, it's about a year to no more than two years. Again, it all depends on the speed of which you want to go about doing that, but effectively what you're doing when you've done the preparation.

You're showing up to your investment banker, you have your own data room. You have all the information that's there. And after your hello, this is who we are this is what we're doing by the way. Here's our data room with all of our due diligence. You have now impressed the heck out of that investment banker.

And just like your buyer. Trust is the currency for your investment banker. So preparation gives you so many advantages. But the biggest advantage that it gives you is it gives you the time to deal with challenges, issues, and problems. And every business has them. When you know what they are and you identify them.

So in other words, your blind spots are no longer your blind spots. When you identify those blind spots, you now have the time to fix them and remove them. You'll have a quicker liquidity event. And at the same, time, you're increasing both the deal certainty and enterprise value. So whatever time, money, and effort is spent in preparing for your liquidity event, it's an absolute rounding error compared to the return on investment that you get.

So those are the five areas of why mergers and acquisitions fail. And we talked about the five strategies of how you can succeed and prosper. Let's do a quick recap.

Mergers and acquisitions fail because business owners aren't prepared for the post-exit life. And the strategy that we spoke about here was to ask the, now what question, and to find activities that have you feeling energized and engaged, you're finding different passions and hobbies and things that you can do after your liquidity event that has you optimize your life for happiness.

Mergers and acquisitions fail when you leave everything to your liquidity event advisors. And the strategy here that we spoke about is to find harmony with you and your advisors. You're not micromanaging, but you're not abdicating. You're finding somewhere in the middle where you're involved. You're trusting your advisors to have them do what they do best. You shared with them a narrative of what you want, what you don't want. They're excited with you to have that liquidity event and because you're involved every step of the way, you're ensuring that everything is in sync. Everything is in alignment with what you're looking for.

The third area is knowing that the currency of your buyer is trust and not money. And here we spoke about that when you master the art and science of thinking like a buyer and the buyer trusts you you'll increase both deal certainty as well as enterprise value. And we spoke there really about not missing the numbers in the projections that you put together and ensuring that you have a strong management team so that the business runs without you.

Mergers and acquisitions also fail because business owners are selfish. And again, this is really pairing off of strategy number three, you're mastering the art of thinking like a buyer. You're doing everything that you can to minimize the risk. You're also presenting a narrative for your future buyer that gets the buyer excited because you have a bright and prosperous future with a very high ROI that's waiting for you.

And the fifth area where mergers and acquisitions fail, it comes from lack of preparation. And the strategy here is to perform an internal due diligence audit well in advance of your liquidity event. And even before you're hiring an investment banker. And one of the things that we spoke about that comes out of that due diligence audit is the opportunity to both improve your business model and management team.

So there you have it. Those are the five areas where most mergers and acquisitions fail. And as the saying goes, knowledge is power if you know where to look and what to do. Well now you know where to look and now you know what to do.

So coming out of this podcast, what can you do? Because I'm a big believer in taking action on the spot. So before going on to the next thing. Go back to strategy number one. The post-exit life. Take a few minutes. And perhaps you want to put into your calendar time where you'll think about the post-exit life, or maybe even want to do it now.

But start with strategy number one, stay with it. Master it. And once done, move on to the next strategy. Rinse repeat, do that for all five strategies and you are so much further ahead than where you would be otherwise.

 Hey, before we close this out, I have a quick question for you.

Did you like what we spoke about today? Did any of this resonate with you? Well, if it did, I really encourage you to think about the 90-day Deep Wealth Experience and whether you come to our website at www.deepwealth.com or in the show notes, you click on a link why not have a free strategy session with us?

And in this brief call, we'll learn about what your goals are for your liquidity event. And we'll explore how we can help you achieve your goals. After all, you don't want any deal. You want to have the best deal.

So as we close out this episode as always a heartfelt, thank you, you've given me your time. Money you can always make, time you can't. And I really appreciate the fact that you took part of your day to spend it with me here on the Sell My Business Podcast.

And as we close us out as always please stay healthy and safe. 

[00:38:13] Sharon S.: The Deep Wealth Experience was definitely a game-changer for me.

Lyn M.: This course is one of the best investments you will ever make because you will get an ROI of a hundred times that. Anybody who doesn't go through it will lose millions.

Kam H.: If you don't have time for this program, you'll never have time for a successful liquidity

Sharon S.: It was the best value of any business course I've ever taken. The money was very well spent.

Lyn M.: Compared to when we first began, today I feel better prepared, but in some respects, may be less prepared, not because of the course, but because the course brought to light so many things that I thought we were on top of that we need to fix.

Kam H.: I 100% believe there's never a great time for a business owner to allocate extra hours into his or her week or day. So it's an investment that will yield results today. I thought I will reap the benefit of this program in three to five years down the road. But as soon as I stepped forward into the program, my mind changed immediately.

Sharon S.: There was so much value in the experience that the time I invested paid back so much for the energy that was expended.

Lyn M.: The Deep Wealth Experience compared to other programs is the top. What we learned is very practical. Sometimes you learn stuff that it's great to learn, but you never use it. The stuff we learned from Deep Wealth Experience, I believe it's going to benefit us a boatload.

Kam H.: I've done an executive MBA. I've worked for billion-dollar companies before. I've worked for smaller companies before I started my business. I've been running my business successfully now for getting close to a decade. We're on a growth trajectory. Reflecting back on the Deep Wealth, I knew less than 10% what I know now, maybe close to 1% even.

Sharon S.: Hands down the best program in which I've ever participated. And we've done a lot of different things over the years. We've been in other mastermind groups, gone to many seminars, workshops, conferences, retreats, read books. This was so different. I haven't had an experience that's anything close to this in all the years that we've been at this.

It's five-star, A-plus.

Kam H.: I would highly recommend it to any super busy business owner out there.

Deep Wealth is an accurate name for it. This program leads to deeper wealth and happier wealth, not just deeper wealth. I don't think there's a dollar value that could be associated with such an experience and knowledge that could be applied today and forever.

Jeffrey Feldberg: Are you leaving millions on the table?

Please visit www.deepwealth.com/success to learn more.

If you're not on my email list, you'll want to be. Sign up at www.deepwealth.com/podcast. And if you enjoyed this episode of the Sell My Business podcast, please leave a review on Apple Podcasts. Reviews help me reach new listeners, grow the show and continue to create content that you'll enjoy.

As we close out this episode, a heartfelt thank you for your time. And as always, please stay healthy and safe. 

‍

This podcast is brought to you by Deep Wealth. 

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Your liquidity event is the most important financial transaction of your life. You have one chance to get it right, and you better make it count. 

But unfortunately, up to 90% of liquidity events fail. Think about all that time, money and effort wasted. Of the "successful" liquidity events, most business owners leave 50% to over 100% of their deal value in the buyer's pocket and don't even know it.

Our founders said "no" to a 7-figure offer and "yes" to a 9-figure offer less than two years later. 

Don't become a statistic and make the fatal mistake of believing that the skills that built your business are the same ones for your liquidity event. 

After all, how can you master something you've never done before? 

Are you leaving millions on the table? 

Learn how the 90-day Deep Wealth Experience and our 9-step roadmap helps you capture the maximum value for your liquidity event.  

Click here to book your free exploratory strategy session.

Enjoy the interview!