Avoid These 12 Mistakes When Selling Your Business: Insights From Scott Deetz

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Avoid These 12 Mistakes When Selling Your Business: Insights From Scott Deetz

Scott DeetzScott Deetz is the Founder and CEO of the Northbound Group, a Minneapolis-based financial advisory firm, providing strategic finance, corporate development, and merger and acquisition services to the e-commerce industry. After selling his first business, an eight-figure brand, Scott realized his passion for helping entrepreneurs and companies sell their businesses. Northbound’s 30-plus-members team is dedicated to the firm’s mission of helping e-commerce entrepreneurs achieve life-changing events. Before founding the Northbound Group, Scott was the Owner and CEO of the Amazon business Entrepreneurial Advantage.

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Here’s a glimpse of what you’ll learn:

  • Why it’s essential for business owners to plan for an exit
  • Avoid these 12 mistakes when you’re ready to sell your company
  • The importance of a compliance and risk management plan
  • Solopreneurs, are you holding monthly CFO meetings?
  • Why you should give buyers a business growth plan
  • Ask these questions before closing the deal
  • What is a letter of intent?
  • Selling your business doesn’t mean early retirement

In this episode…

It takes several years to build a company, but you stand a chance to leave a bulk of money on the table if a business exit isn’t conducted properly. Over 50% of a business’s earnings comes after selling it, so how can you ensure a rewarding exit?

According to mergers and acquisitions expert Scott Deetz, the best time to plan a business exit is before going into business. Many entrepreneurs make common mistakes during the exit process, such as failing to eliminate deal killers, having inaccurate financials, and misunderstanding a business’s full earning potential. To maximize your exit, ensure your company is in excellent financial health, have a clear exit strategy, hire a competent investment banker or M&A advisor, and be prepared to walk away from an unfair deal.

Join Josh Hadley in today’s episode of the eComm Breakthrough Podcast, where he welcomes back Scott Deetz, the Founder and CEO of Northbound Group, to talk about the top 12 mistakes to avoid when trying to sell a business. Scott expounds on the necessity of an exit and compliance and risk management plan, why small businesses and solopreneurs need to hold monthly CFO meetings, and critical questions to ask before closing the deal.

Resources mentioned in this episode:

Special Mention(s):

Related Episode(s):

Sponsor for this episode…

This episode is brought to you by Ecomm Breakthrough Consulting where I help seven-figure ecommerce owners grow to eight figures. Of course…

I started Hadley Designs in 2015 and grew it to an eight-figure brand in seven years.

I made mistakes along the way that made the path to eight figures longer. At times I doubted whether our business could even survive and become a real brand. I wish I would have had a guide to help me grow faster and avoid the stumbling blocks.

If you’ve hit a plateau and want to know the next steps to take your business to the next level, then go to www.EcommBreakthrough.com (that’s Ecomm with two M’s) to learn more.

As a special bonus to my podcast listeners, this month I’m giving away one $10,000 comprehensive business strategy audit session at no cost. Email me at josh@ecommbreakthrough.com with the subject line “Strategy Audit” and tell me why your business should win the free audit for the chance to win and don’t worry, if you don’t win the free strategy audit this month, you’ll automatically be entered for future months.

Episode Transcript

Intro 0:04

Welcome to the eComm Breakthrough Podcast. Are you ready to unlock the full potential and growth in your business? You’ve already crossed seven figures in sales, but the challenge is knowing how to take your business to the next level. Join Josh Hadley and eight-figure e-comm business owner and investor, as he interviews highly successful business owners. Get ready because you’re going to learn specific actions you can take today to help your business reach its full potential and leave a lasting impact on the world.

Josh Hadley 0:37

Welcome to the eComm Breakthrough Podcast. I’m your host Josh Hadley where I interview the top business leaders in e-commerce. Past guests include Kevin King, Michael E. Gerber, the author of The E-Myth, and Roland Frasier. Today I’m speaking with Scott Deetz, Founder and CEO of the Northbound Group. And we’re going to be talking a lot about the top 12 deal mistakes that you can make when you’re trying to sell or considering selling your business. This episode is brought to you by the eComm Breakthrough Consulting, where I help seven-figure companies grow to eight figures and beyond. Listen, Scott, I started my business back in 2015, and grew it to an eight-figure brand in seven years. But I made a lot of mistakes along the way that made the path of getting to eight figures take a lot longer than there needed to be. And to your point of the 12 deal mistakes that you’re going to share with us. I could have my own 12 mistakes that I made, they made the vat of getting to eight figures take a lot longer than it needed to. But long story short for our audience, those people that are running into plateaus have you know, do you have what it takes to build an eight figure brand? Do you have what it takes to be able to manage cash flow in a physical products business? If you have questions with that go to eCommBreakthrough.com. That’s e-comm with two M’s To learn more, but today I am super excited to introduce you all to Scott Deetz. We’ve already introduced him because he’s been on the podcast previously. So he is our first part two guests that we’ve had. So you know, Scott, there’s your award of the day already is a you’re our first part-two guest. But I am super excited. This is something we didn’t have enough time in episode number one. And Scott has taken a lot of time to develop and actually prepared a presentation that he’ll share with you guys today about this kind of part two. But here’s Scott’s bio. Scott is the Founder and CEO of the Northbound Group, a leading strategic finance and corporate development and sellside M&A advisory firm, focused on Amazon and e-commerce, physical goods, and SaaS businesses. Northbound has more than 30 full-time team members dedicated to the mission of helping e-commerce entrepreneurs achieve life changing events. So with that introduction, welcome to the show again, Scott Deetz.

Scott Deetz 3:01

Hey, Josh, how you doing? No, it’s great to be back. And this was a lot of fun for me to work with our team to put the content together. So I’m looking forward to sharing it and, and hearing your thoughts on it. And obviously, part of my own personal passion is I want to help every sell-side entrepreneur, get what they deserve. For their businesses, you as you said, you work years and years. And as I always like to say you work years and years to build a company. But if you don’t do the last step right of exiting that company, you’re oftentimes leaving more than half of your money on the table. Because for many physical goods and other sellers, the money they actually take home from their businesses, the bulk of it comes more than 50% comes when you exit, not the entire time that you’re running the business because you’re always reinvesting back in the business. So real, really looking forward to sharing the content with you and everybody else and getting your feedback.

Josh Hadley 3:56

Yeah, Scott, there’s one thing I listened to one of your presentations at CampEcom. And the one thing that really stuck out to me that you really harped on a lot is if 50% of your kind of earning capacity is going to come from the exit of your business or your brand. Why does everybody push off your the planning for an exit until you say hey, now I’m ready to exit my business. And it’s like, whoa, whoa, whoa, there’s some things that you should have gotten in place leading up into leading up to this point. And so I think the biggest takeaway that I got, and you had mentioned this, is that if you plan to exit your business, that’s going to be your biggest liquidity event most likely of your life, you should be spending a dedicated number of hours every single week on something that is going to be life changing for you, instead of just assuming, hey, when I want to sell the magic just all happens at that time. And so that is what I’m super excited about what you’re going to be sharing today because I think A lot of these 12 Mistakes are going to be things that people didn’t necessarily need to make these mistakes had they planned better in advance. So, Scott, I’m super excited. If you want to go ahead and share your screen, let’s dive into what you’re referring to as the “dirty dozen.”

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