After My Company's Size Increased, The March Group Helped Sell My Business
Posted by Michelle Segura on Wed, Dec 02, 2009 @ 03:35 PM
Dear Entrepreneur,
I like racing. In 1997, my wife and I purchased our first semi-new car, a one-year-old Camaro. We'd go to a drag strip every once in awhile on the weekends. Some of the parts that I built helped it to get better traction at the track, made it safer and made the suspension adjustable that's not adjustable from the factory.
I had a few friends who were doing the same thing and had the same kind of cars. They started seeing what I was doing and wanted me to build a few parts for them. It kept going that way and I thought maybe I can do something with this. I'd always wanted to be self-employed.
I basically learned as I went. There was no business plan. I was fortunate that my wife was making decent money so that I could give it a shot. For the first two years, it was really scary. We never did any financing for probably six years into the business. If we didn't have enough money to buy it, then we made do with what we had. Then we ended up having to move out of place that we were at. It was too small. It was really holding us back. We actually purchased property. We had seven employees when we got into building.
We were doing so well with this company. I didn't know how to run a company this size. I was having a hard time finding time for invoicing, just paying bills and ordering supplies. So of all people, my wife quit her career job and came over to run the office. It was supposed to be temporary.
I really enjoyed the part that I started off doing. I enjoyed designing and building the components, testing them. But I never, ever enjoyed the management part of it. Building parts that people are racing with, there's always that liability concern. We were paying $40,000 a year for liability insurance. It just got crazy. We didn't feel comfortable. We felt like any moment something could happen and we'd lose it all.
I found the March Group on the internet. People don't' realize what's involved in a sale. They would be smart to use a broker. It helps to relieve 90 percent of the headaches throughout the sale. Even though they get a pretty decent commission from the sale, I think that we would have lost more trying to do it ourselves. If someone is hesitant because of what it costs, they shouldn't be because it's going to make up for it in the long run.
One of the things about the March Group was that we never had a problem getting return phone calls, getting hold of somebody. Most of the time it was them prodding us when they needed something because we were so busy. Without their prodding, it could have dragged out even longer. It was really easy to deal with them. The March Group made it simple.
My wife is back in her career. I'm working for the new company owner but I'm still working for myself. It's just a contractual obligation. It worked out pretty good. We're much happier.
With warmest regards,
Brett Rockey
Founder, BMR Fabrication