If you'd like a sure-fire way to make sure you never "overpay" for a business you want to buy, then this article contains a simple little "tactic" that can save you a lot of money.
Listen, this will sound very basic but it works: The whole key to making sure you never get taken for a ride on the price when buying a business is to simply take everything the seller says with a grain of salt.
In other words, you simply have to check everything out they give you and verify it. Take nothing on good faith. Do not "trust" the seller, no matter how much he kisses your butt or how "great a guy" he seems to be.
You can verify almost everything simply by bringing in a CPA...and having him (or her) check out the financials from the last four or five years to make sure everything jives with what the seller is saying. Simple? Yes. But buying a business is simple when it comes down to it. It's all about doing your homework, checking everything out and taking your time.
And when you do this youll find that all these things you need to know -- the good, the bad and the ugly -- will pop out. In fact, once you go through your first business, and even if you dont close on it, youre going to find by the time you get to the second one the next week or the week after, the same things are going to pop up. By the time youve gone out to look for maybe a month, and youve looked at a number of businesses, the same things will keep happening over and over again...and you're going to start to feel like a genius at this. This is no joke, either. I've even seen people with "room temperature" IQ's -- and with no formal education whatsoever -- buy businesses (even very large businesses) simply by following these steps.
I know it's hard to believe, but it really is that simple. |
