Seller’s Regret Is Preventable: How to Prepare for the Transaction of a Lifetime

Episode Description:

Tim Vorhoff is the founding partner of Creo Vallo and author of Exit Right: How to Sell Your Company. He spent years at Evercore, one of the world’s top investment banks, before launching his own firm to help mid-market and family-run business owners prepare for and execute an external sale. In this conversation, Tim and Elizabeth get into the difference between internal and external sales, the five D’s that force unplanned transactions, why financial readiness can make or break a deal, and why the owners who put in the preparation work walk away with the strongest outcomes. Tim brings stories from the field, including a court transcription company that sold for 8x EBITDA because the owners had built a business that ran without them, and a friend who sold his auto repair business only to start another one two years later because the sale was never about the money. It was about figuring out what came next. Tap or click the play button below to listen to Seller’s Regret Is Preventable: How to Prepare for the Transaction of a Lifetime.

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What would happen if someone called tomorrow with an offer to buy your business? Would you know what to do, or would you be scrambling to figure it out?

Most owners spend decades building a company and only months trying to sell it. Tim Vorhoff, founding partner of Creo Vallo and author of Exit Right, has made it his mission to close that gap. In this episode, Tim and Elizabeth break down what actually goes into a successful external sale: what buyers evaluate, why your financials might be the single biggest dealbreaker, and what it looks like to build a business that can transfer to someone who’s never set foot inside it.

Tim shares stories from his work with mid-market and family-owned businesses. A court transcription company that sold for $16 million because the owners had stepped away 15 years earlier and the business kept growing. A friend who sold his auto repair business, traveled, bought everything he wanted, got bored, and opened another shop because the work itself was always the point. And a nine-figure revenue company that couldn’t go to market because their accounting system couldn’t break out revenue by service line.

Whether you’re five years out or just beginning to think about what’s next for your business, this episode lays the groundwork for making that transition on your terms.

In this episode, you’ll learn:

  • The difference between an internal sale and an external sale, and why each one calls for a different approach
  • What the “five D’s” are and why unplanned events can destroy business value when there’s no preparation in place
  • Why the most transferable businesses command the highest valuations, and what “transferable” actually means in practice
  • How long it takes to build the infrastructure, processes, and team that make a business ready for a buyer
  • Why financial readiness is the number one deal-killer and how disorganized books can derail even the strongest companies
  • What Tim means by “know the rules of the game before you play,” and why a little education is the most affordable insurance an owner can get

 

Chapters in this episode:

01:00Welcome and Meet Tim Vorhoff
02:23Writing a Book vs. Running 240 Miles
03:18The Mission Behind Exit Right
04:19Internal vs. External Sales: What’s the Difference?
06:24Unsolicited Offers and the Five D’s
08:27Why Selling a Business Is a Journey, Not an Event
09:27Seller’s Regret and the Transferability Premium
11:05The Court Transcription Company That Sold for 8x
12:30Building a Business That Doesn’t Need You
13:04Planning Your Life After the Sale
15:10Why Younger Founders Transition Differently Than Older Ones
16:15“Complaining Over Caviar”: Replacing Yourself Successfully
17:32The Evolve Program and Designing Your Road Forward
19:15How Early Should You Start Preparing?
20:42Infrastructure: Processes, Procedures, and Letting Go
23:03The Apple Test: Could Everyone Leave and the Business Still Run?
25:14Working In the Business vs. On the Business
26:10Financials: The Bedrock of Any Transaction
28:15The Cruise Ship Metaphor: Small Course Corrections Matter
29:22When There’s No Plan: A Cautionary Tale
30:00Surround Yourself With the Right Cabinet of Advisors
30:36Tim’s Parting Advice: Know the Rules Before You Play

Connect with Tim Vorhoff:
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/timvorhoff/
Book: https://howtoexitright.com/
Website: https://creovalo.com/

Connect with Elizabeth Ledoux and the Transition Strategists:
Website: https://transitionstrategists.com/
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/thetransitionstrategists
Elizabeth on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/elizabethledoux/
Transition Strategists on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/transitionstrategists/
Transition Strategists on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@transitionstrategists

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Hosted by Andrea Carpenter, Your Next Gen Friend is for the next generation stepping into leadership in family and private businesses. If you’re a successor figuring out your path, this show is for you.

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Get Elizabeth Ledoux and Laura Chiesman’s latest book, “It’s A Journey: The MUST-HAVE Roadmap to Successful Succession Planning”: https://amzn.to/3oq2LQv

 

Seller’s Regret Is Preventable: How to Prepare for the Transaction of a Lifetime Transcript

Elizabeth Ledoux:
Hi everyone and welcome back to the Business Transition Roadmap.

Elizabeth Ledoux, your podcast host today, and I am excited to have Tim Vorhoff on our podcast today. ⁓ know, most business owners spend decades building something and then only months trying to sell it. And the gap is exactly what this, what my guest today has made his mission to kind of close that up. ⁓ Tim is the founding partner of

Creo Vallo, and author of Exit Right, How to Sell Your Company. ⁓ He’s a veteran of Evercore, turned founder and advocate, and he helps mid-market and family-run business owners prepare for and execute the most important financial transaction truly of their lives. And he helps them do it on their terms, which I think is so amazing.

He’s a retired ultra marathoner and he’s got 240 mile races on his resume. I can’t even imagine what that’s like to him to do that long of a race. And he knows a thing or two about really going a long distance to make things happen. So Tim, it’s so great to have you today. Thanks for joining me.

Tim Vorhoff:
Yeah, thank you, Elizabeth. I’m excited to be here. And I’ll tell you on a personal note, I thought writing a book was more difficult than running 240 miles in the desert. So that gives you any context.

Elizabeth Ledoux:
my gosh.

Yeah, I can only, I can imagine. I can imagine. Yeah, I’ve been an author too. I’ve written a couple books and it’s more grueling than you think. Yeah, it looks glamorous on the outside, but it’s a lot of work.

Tim Vorhoff:
Absolutely. And I wrote the book because I felt like my clients needed this information. What we kind of focus on at Creo Valo and the whole mission of the book was to help owners understand the exit. You when it comes time to selling a business, there are tons of outside parties that all have different influences. Buyers want to buy them, bankers want to sell them, and accountants want to help them do financials. Insurance wants to make sure that their policies are in order. And what my goal is

Elizabeth Ledoux:
Yeah.

Tim Vorhoff:
to educate owners on what is the playbook. What do you actually need to know? What are your options? And then how can you bring together a team of professionals to go out and execute on whatever your goals and objectives are for a transaction?

Elizabeth Ledoux:
⁓ Yeah. And it’s so interesting, if you’re an owner and you’re walking into even beginning to think about how you are going to get out of the business and actually how you’re going to monetize hopefully your years and years and years of work.

If you’re thinking about going for what would be an external sale, and Tim, you can talk a little bit about that, versus an internal sale, ⁓ Tim’s real focus is on that external sale. So Tim, can you just give a highlight of what’s the difference between those two things? And yeah, how does an owner start to focus on an external sale?

Tim Vorhoff:
Yeah, well, the internal sale I’ll leave to you as your expertise and we’ll love for you to chime in on that. But the difference is just who’s buying the business. In an internal sale, it’s typically from one generation to the next. And what that means is it’s often a very friendly transaction. It’s highly structured and it takes place often over time because in most scenarios I’ve seen, the second generation doesn’t have enough money to pay outright the first generation for the entirety of the company.

And so an external sale is, okay, we own this business. Somebody outside of the company will be the ultimate acquirer of it. So think of if you’re running an appliance retail store and you have four locations and let’s say there’s been a competitor of yours who’s been banging down your door for the last five years saying, hey, whenever you’re ready to sell, I want to buy you. An external sale would be selling to that competitor or selling to a professional investment firm.

Elizabeth Ledoux:
Nice, nice. yeah, and selling to an external person or, or, you know, entity is very, very different. The process is very different. Preparing the company, there’s some components of preparing it that help you in either instance, right? Whether you’re selling internally or externally, because selling internally would be ⁓ to another partner could be an internal sale.

to a child or a family member to an employee, but it’s somebody typically that you know. And I guess in my experience, it’s also a situation where you’re ready to maybe stop doing as much as you have been, might want to share your wealth. So you’re gonna stay in for a little while longer and then maybe external, right? Go for an external sale where you can.

if you will, make some millionaires along the way, which is fun to do and a lot of owners really enjoy that. Those internal versus external, you can have both actually in a company over the long haul.

Tim Vorhoff:
Yeah, absolutely. And I think what’s interesting is that in our line of work, the most often reasons we get involved are entirely unprovoked by the owner and they’re caused by something exogenous to the business. So the two most likely scenarios are one, the owner’s running their business and then out of the blue, somebody says, hey, I want to buy your business and here’s the price I’ll pay. We call that an unsolicited offer. And for most owners,

They don’t consider it, they’re doing their job, they’re growing the business, they get this offer, they’re like, wow, I need to consider this. Or worse, they decide to start going down the path of negotiating with that single buyer. That’s scenario one that is very often the case why we get involved. The second scenario is what I call unexpected events or the five Ds, which are death, divorce, disability, disagreement, and displacement. What all these things have in common is they’re entirely unplanned.

Elizabeth Ledoux:
Hmm.

Tim Vorhoff:
And what that means is something happens to the founder or the owner and the business has to transact. And in either of those scenarios, without proper planning, owners will leave value on the table. And I mentioned this because like anything, the more an owner can get educated and plan for what their ultimate goals are, the more they can ultimately make in that exit. Because like you said, an external buyer is like selling your house.

to somebody outside of your family. You might love all the nuances and quirks and the fact that the washing machine, you have to hit it a couple of times to get it to function. Your family might not care, but somebody else is gonna want the house to be move in ready. And what that means for companies is that all the policies, the accounting, the financials, the people, they need to be in order. And more importantly, they need to be prepared in a way that allows somebody else

Elizabeth Ledoux:
Yeah.

Tim Vorhoff:
to gain an understanding of your business to the level that they’re willing to wire millions of dollars to own it, which is a pretty high bar. It takes a lot of work.

Elizabeth Ledoux:
Yeah, yeah, it absolutely takes a lot of work. And that kind of goes, Tim, into a thought that I’ve had for years is that this is a journey. is, you try not, you your five D’s, that’s an event. And many times it’s completely out of your control and oftentimes dumps into somebody else’s control that isn’t prepared at all. They know nothing and they are not ready.

⁓ So yeah, and even the offer from, you know, Out of the Blue, that’s a pretty cool feeling, I think, to have. Like, hey, somebody thinks this is worth a lot of money. ⁓ But it’s ⁓ usually they come at you with a huge, nice story. And once they get into it, you know, if you are not prepared, then that 20 or 30 million dollars all of a sudden becomes 10 or 15.

Right? And you’ve gone through a lot of work to figure that out and you’re disappointed.

Tim Vorhoff:
Yeah, and you know what? I wrote the book for that exact reason, was that if you spent decades building a business, the worst thing that could happen is you sell it and you have sellers regret. And in our experience, the best way to make sure that they’re happy with the result

on a high level, think of businesses are a reflection of the people who built them. And just like people, businesses are never done. They’re always a work in process. And I’ve never seen an owner over prepare for a transaction because it’s impossible. The more work an owner spends creating a more professional, more transferable business increases the ultimate value they would receive.

in the same way that increasing revenue or increasing profits would. Now that’s something that a lot of owners don’t fully internalize because I know for me and my business, I want more revenue, I want to make more money and that’s a great yardstick for determining how successful is the company. But when it comes to selling the business, a buyer is going to look at the value they pay you based on how risky is the transition to me, AKA they’re buying the future and you’re

be receiving the past. And so they’re buying the future. We need to take steps to ensure that this business can operate with a different set of owners. What that means is we got to have the right people in place. The relationships can’t be all concentrated in the founder. It means suppliers need to understand who is the right person to work with. And we’ve had, I’ll give you an example. was working with these two gentlemen in their mid seventies and they had a court transcription reporting business.

Crazy to think that this business was still around, but they just transcribed depositions for attorneys. They were a smaller business, maybe two million in EBITDA. We introduced a banker who was able to pay them, get them eight times their two million of EBITDA for a total sale value of 16 million. Now that was an extraordinary value for what for me initially I thought was a pretty low tech or rather unattractive business.

Elizabeth Ledoux:
Wow.

Tim Vorhoff:
but one of the most attractive features that allowed buyers to pay such a higher price for it, the two owners had been entirely uninvolved for the last 15 years and the business had continued to grow. What that meant was that they could change the ownership tomorrow and the company would be fine. And that takes a lot of work and that takes having a destination in mind to build a business like that. And those owners knew from the beginning where their destination was.

Elizabeth Ledoux:
Yeah.

Yeah, and that’s really a cool concept too because so many owners, ⁓ and I think about mindsets and belief systems and also joy and fulfillment in life. And there’s so many owners who have a belief that the business won’t do well without them. many of them love being around the people, helping the employees, love

dealing with the customers on a daily basis. so ⁓ when you’re going through something like that, the only way that you really can build a business that you’re not at and it’s not dependent on you is to have something else that’s so exciting outside of the business that you’d rather be doing that instead of living your life inside the business. And that’s a big shift for an owner to go through.

Tim Vorhoff:
100%. And there’s two chapters in my book. One of the first chapters is planning your life after the exit. Because if you’re working 50 hours a week and you’re like, want to sell my company. I want to go play golf. I want to travel and to see my kids. I can tell you the story of my friend, Mike, who had an automobile repair shop in Florida. He started as a technician, then a manager, then bought his own single location auto repair shop. He grew it into the premier spot in Florida.

for high-end car maintenance and repair. Public company approached him with an offer that he had never dreamed of, and he took it. For two years, he bought all the cars he wanted, bought all the houses he wanted, he traveled, saw his kids, and then he got bored. And do know what he did at that point? Started another auto repair shop. Because he realized…

Elizabeth Ledoux:
Another business. Yeah, probably because

his non-compete was over.

Tim Vorhoff:
Yeah. And he realized that it was never really about the money. was about serving his customers and clients, taking care of his employees, doing good job, being known in the community for what he would do. And he’s grateful for the experience of having sold it and he wouldn’t change a thing. But I would say that that was an example where he hadn’t fully thought about what is my life going to look like if I no longer do this every day? And it takes somebody actually asking those questions.

What are you going to do? And to begin that transition, because what we found is that for owners in their, call it late sixties, seventies, the business defines their purpose and they’re very unlikely to sell the business because it’s the reason that they get up every day. They don’t have, it has defined their existence for decades and they don’t have other things. Whereas for the younger entrepreneurs, oftentimes the business is the roadblock to their next expression.

Elizabeth Ledoux:
Hmm.

Tim Vorhoff:
which is often another business. And so they need to exit in the current one to unlock time, resources, money, et cetera, to be able to pursue whatever the next iteration of their entrepreneurial expression is.

Elizabeth Ledoux:
Yeah, yeah, and that makes so much sense. And you would think, at least I would think that it would be the flip of that, right? That the 60, 70 year olds would be thinking, wow, I’ve really done this. I’m ready to go do something else and I’m ready to live, you know, maybe those, think of runways, right? My runway is shorter. I want to make sure that I get to go do that Europe trip for, you know.

live over there for a month or two when I want to spend time with my spouse and I want to make sure that I have that time for my grandkids and my kids. But it really, technically in experience, it is the opposite. It’s amazing.

Tim Vorhoff:
Yeah, well, it just kind of gets back to planning in advance. And if what these owners want to do is spend more time with their kids and grandkids, the best thing they can do today is begin offloading their responsibilities to other people at their business so they can start doing that. And I’ll give you another example of my friend, Gabe. Gabe has a very successful company and they’re essentially they…

I don’t want to give too many details, what Gabe was doing was he was at an inflection point where he knew he needed to replace himself. And he went out and very deliberately hired a president and a professional CEO. He incentivized them appropriately. And then he moved into a chairman position. And I’ll never forget this. calls me and says, Tim, I hired these two guys six months in. The business has never been growing faster. I’ve never been making more money and I’ve never done less work.

and I’m kind of having an identity crisis and I was wondering, is there anybody you can introduce me to who’s done this before? And I said, Gabe, do you know what I like to call this? This is complaining over caviar. This is a great problem to have because you’re one of the few entrepreneurs that actually replace themselves successfully and are seeing the benefits of that because it is single-handedly one of the most valuable things an entrepreneur can do.

Elizabeth Ledoux:
Yeah.

Tim Vorhoff:
Because the skills of bringing a company from zero to two to five million are very different than bringing a company from five to 25 million or 25 to 100 million. And in an ideal world, we want to bring in somebody who’s done that piece before, who has the experience and we can incentivize them to run their playbook again.

Elizabeth Ledoux:
Yeah.

Yeah, absolutely. if you were, you know, because, you know, our Evolve program, our Evolve program is about beginning your journey. So we don’t know.

and most of the people who start the Evolve program, ⁓ they don’t know what their road forward looks like. The goal is inside of that to be able to design and explore what it is they want, what are the objectives in their lives, what’s important to them. ⁓

And what do they want for the business and all of these different objectives that they’re trying to figure out so they can come up to a roadmap forward that says, hey, I’m going to explore an external sale because maybe I’ve done some work inside and I already know I don’t have anybody who’s interested or I’ve already, you know, I’m through the process. They’ve explored talking to their kids or whatever some of that journey might be. So it gets them to a point where instead of

you know, what do I want to do, big picture, ⁓ with a thousand different roads forward, it kind of narrows that down for them, because they’ve done some of that work. ⁓ Saves them a lot of time and a lot of money and a lot of heartache going forward. But in your opinion, how…

many years or how long does it take? How early should a business owner be starting if they’re thinking about an external sale? What’s that runway look like?

Tim Vorhoff:
Great question. And want to say, ⁓ it sounds like your Evolve program is very well structured. Because from my experience, when we begin with values, we begin with what is the dream outcome, then we can craft a plan to get there. And that has to encapsulate everything because for these founders and owners, the business, it’s not just business. Their family is often involved. Their employees are basically their closest relatives, closest friends.

And we need to think about it as a whole and not just as a transaction. But the answer is, I don’t think it’s ever too early to prepare. And I think the best early preparation work is education and begin talking to people who will be helpful along the journey. So begin talking to folks like yourself, begin talking to accountants, attorneys, investment banks, to begin to understand and fill in that role, that rolodex of people who will be helpful along the way.

Elizabeth Ledoux:
Yeah.

Tim Vorhoff:
And I touch on all this in the book because all these people, these professionals around a transaction are critical. But we want to know when is their expertise needed? When is the right time to talk to them? But we want to begin building trust with these people. So that way when it comes crunch time, we’re not scrambling to try to find somebody, but we’ve already developed a relationship with folks who understand the business, understand the goals, and then can provide very deliberate and thoughtful advice when it’s needed.

Elizabeth Ledoux:
That’s great. What made me ask that question is the idea of infrastructure. Because if you don’t have processes and procedures, if you have a lot of knowledge in your head as an owner-founder, and literally you’ve done it for so long that you don’t even really know how you do it, ⁓ those processes and procedures and just moving you from

being very, the business being very dependent on you and your life getting up and, you know, I’m thinking of an owner. He’s run this company for 50 years. He is there every day between six and seven. He’s there before his installers show up and he’s there at the end of the day. And his wife would love to have him come home and, you know, maybe come home and help out and maybe go on a vacation or a trip sometime.

But he’s been running it for 50 years and it’s truly his life. So putting in the processes and procedures where you’re not the hub decision maker, ⁓ that can take, I guess in my experience, two, three years. Two or three years would be probably pretty quick.

Tim Vorhoff:
Well, because if we think about it, I remember when I first started getting into the business and people talk about processes and procedures, and it always felt like this elusive concept. But the way that I think about it practically is if I were to die tomorrow, who would do my job? And if the answer is that everything runs through my email, through me, I then delegate, I make decisions.

then we need to just simply figure out how to get the work done without that person there. So how can we put somebody else into this role and give them the tools that they need to be successful, right? So we’re thinking about hiring a marketing person right now. And what we’re going through is how can we make sure we have all the resources, we have their job clearly articulated so that they can come in and be successful day one. And then the goal is, okay, how can we bring in one person?

Elizabeth Ledoux:
Yeah.

Tim Vorhoff:
But then how can we allow that person to then transition out? And so if we think about the world’s most valuable companies, I like to give Apple as an example. I would argue that every single employee at Apple could leave and Apple would still be Apple. Every single employee in that business could go in and come out and Apple will still continue to function. That’s an example of a business has clearly defined roles, processes, ways of doing their work.

Elizabeth Ledoux:
Yeah.

Yeah.

Tim Vorhoff:
where the people can be continually cycled in and out. At Evercore, it was similar. They had an intensive training program where for 10 weeks we went to New York and we learned the job. Then we went into the office and we began doing it. How can we think about doing this exact same thing in these owners’ businesses to ensure that it’s successful into the future if they’re no longer around?

Elizabeth Ledoux:
when I think about that and I think about that runway, that’s why.

I think it might be a little bit longer than maybe what we think it might be. Just because if you’re used to, as a business owner, doing things yourself and people coming to you and you’re at the hub and you’re about ready to then shift, because it’s a big shift in how the culture works and everything, I’m going to start hiring people. I’m going to give them access to things that maybe I haven’t wanted people to have access to in the past. So they have the tools and the authority to do that and the information.

and I am going to, in essence, I’m gonna start letting go. But as I do that, that’s a transition for me, and I’m bringing in somebody new, and I’m paying for them. So there’s a hit on the company too, as far as from a financial perspective that needs to be made up, right? It’s an investment in your future. So yeah, it takes a long time to make those what I call behavioral shifts, and if you don’t know what you’re trying to accomplish,

like to prepare for a sale or prepare for some kind of an exit, you really aren’t thinking about that. You’re just running the business and kind of status quo, sort of okay.

Tim Vorhoff:
Yeah, well, it’s easy. know, it’s, it’s almost like working in the business versus on the business. And I found that it’s very difficult for me at times to come out of it and to think more big picture because it’s, it’s kind of a different, it’s just a different way of thinking for me. Right. So every day I’m meeting with companies, I’m thinking through who to introduce, what does this business do? What’s the, what are the right questions to ask to really unpack this situation?

And then all of sudden I have to just take a step back and think, okay, as a business, what do we need to do to grow? And one of the other biggest inhibitors to a sale are the financials. And the financials are the bedrock from which other third parties will grow to understand somebody’s business. And there have been more processes derailed by having bad financials than

Elizabeth Ledoux:
Hmm.

Tim Vorhoff:
probably any other single factor. And what I like to say is that imagine you’re on a cruise ship and you’re a quarter mile off the coast and all of a sudden you need to change your destination by three miles. It’s going to be very difficult to turn that boat towards a different direction. But if I’m three miles off the coast, all it takes is a very small directional change to get to the destination. And the reason why I bring that up with financials is that I’ll give you an example. We were working with a company.

that had recently integrated a new software system. And what happened was that they weren’t accurately recording their financial statements. Some things were being miscategorized and they were a very large company and they wanted to pursue a transaction. This was in May of 2025. And after taking a look at it and going under the hood, said, look, we can’t pursue a transaction until we fix the accounting period.

no third party is to be able to get comfortable with buying your business if they can’t make heads or tails of what your numbers are. And so we had to take a step back, bring in a third party accounting firm to first just verify all the numbers. But then to take it a step further, this was a nine figure revenue business. They didn’t have reporting by different revenue line items, so the different services that they provided. They didn’t have breakdown by commercial versus residential work, by

Elizabeth Ledoux:
Yeah.

Tim Vorhoff:
all of their revenues were tied into one bundle. And a buyer needs to understand how to slice and dice your business because that’s how they’re going to make strategic decisions moving forward. So a simple question would be, what service line is your most profitable and growing the fastest?

Elizabeth Ledoux:
Yeah, and if you can’t answer that, that’s a rough one. And, you know, and I think I’m an engineer by background, and I love doing things right. And it’s, to me, I’m a futurist. I don’t like going backwards and fixing things because to me, I’ve already paid somebody to do it one time. And I really don’t want to pay somebody to do it again.

Tim Vorhoff:
Yeah.

Elizabeth Ledoux:
Right? It’s just a lot of money and a lot of heartache to have to go back, especially if I’m trying to get somewhere in a reasonable amount of time. And if you go back to those four Ds, right, or the surprise offer, if you are not ready, is a long, long, long road for whoever ends up with the situation, which I think you and us both at the transition strategist and your company, we’re trying to help people avoid that because it is awful to have to go through that.

Thank

Tim Vorhoff:
There

have been scenarios where we’ve seen the entire business value deteriorate because of something like that.

Elizabeth Ledoux:
Yeah, yeah, leaving nothing to the next gen.

Tim Vorhoff:
He was entirely dependent on a single doctor.

He died in a tragic plane crash and virtually all the value went away overnight because nobody was prepared for it. were no other doctors. was nobody who could step in and the people who stepped in had never been in business. They weren’t doctors. They didn’t understand it. It was just a mess. And what could have been intergenerational wealth for his kids, his family, his heirs ended up being nothing. And

Elizabeth Ledoux:
Hmm.

Yeah.

Tim Vorhoff:
All because there

Elizabeth Ledoux:
Yeah.

Tim Vorhoff:
was no estate plan in place. They never considered what happens in the event that, you know, he passes away.

Elizabeth Ledoux:
Yeah?

Yeah.

And we all know many, many, many nice stories like that. I know our time goes so quickly and we’re already, yeah, we’ve already been on quite a while. So ⁓ it’s time for us to wrap up. And I guess moral of the story from my perspective is truly consider ⁓ spending a little bit of time really deciding what direction you want to go so that then you can surround

yourself with the right cabinet of advisors and people and you have time to go interview them and decide who you want to work with and then walk down that road with confidence. That’s the idea. ⁓ And yeah, to summarize our conversation today, Tim, I love at the end of my podcast to ask the guest, what one thing would you leave with our audience today? ⁓ Just what one thing of either a

tip or inspiration would you leave for them to consider?

Tim Vorhoff:
I have this quote on the back of my book and it says, know the rules of the game before you play. If I step on a tennis court and I don’t even know how tennis is played, there’s no world in which I’m going to win that game, period. Selling a business is a game and there are ways to maximize the exit, to maximize a transaction. It’s not rocket science. All it takes is a practical education. That’s why I wrote the book and…

There’s a ton of free resources, but taking the time to get educated for owners will pay dividends.

Elizabeth Ledoux:
That’s awesome. I love, love, love that quote. So thank you so much for being here today. Really appreciate all your insight and your input. ⁓ yeah, congratulations on your business and being the owner founder of that. It’s exciting. ⁓

I know that in our show notes for everybody, you’ll be able to see ⁓ information about the book, where to get it, and how to contact and get in touch with Tim. So ⁓ yeah, Tim, thank you again for being here today.

Tim Vorhoff:
Thank you, Elizabeth. Appreciate it.

 

SCHEDULE A COMPLIMENTARY CONSULTATION

The Business Transition Roadmap with Elizabeth Ledoux

How do communities thrive? When businesses experience healthy growth and transition. Join CEO of The Transition Strategists, Elizabeth Ledoux as she and her guests identify what makes a successful business transition roadmap. If you know you want to transition or exit your business “one day”, today is the right day to start planning. This show will give you the roadmap.

If you’ve enjoyed this podcast, you can check out other episodes here: Podcasts – The Transition Strategists

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