309 - What Happens If You Don't Follow The Busines Acquisition Steps?

0:00What happens if you don't follow the business acquisition steps? In my experience, that is always a mistake to not do that. So first, to be able to follow the steps, you have to know what the steps are. So you have to pick an industry. You have to assemble a board of directors. You have to get professionals, law and accounting firms. You have to talk to banks. You have to eventually talk to prospects. Then you have to close the deals. But if you don't know the steps, it's pretty difficult to follow them. So those are the steps. If you want more detail on those steps, templates, etc., go over to brucewhipple.com, and the Acquisition Advantage Boot Camp is the best work that I have done.

0:46So you know what to do as far as the steps, so good step one. But then what happens if you decided you didn't want to follow the steps? And I've got plenty of examples of that. The first reason that I want to point out to follow the steps is that most people doing this are new to business. They haven't done deals, and as such, they really don't have any credibility. And adding the board of directors gives you credibility that you don't directly have, but by transference, they would not have gotten involved with you if they didn't feel like you had something that could work. So people begin to say, well, I don't know about him, but the team around him is pretty darn good, so he must have something going for him.

1:33Same is true with professionals. It will help you get them, give you credibility, and depending upon the professionals that you get, now the board of directors and your professionals also give you credibility. You want to talk to banks to understand what businesses are selling for, what they'll loan at. Always remember to certainly pitch seller finance, and we've talked about that, as opposed to a bank, much, much easier. So if you don't follow the steps, what happens? I had a mentee this past month who talked to, got law firms on a delayed discounted fee basis. And when he started to work accounting firms, He said, man, it's tougher.

2:19I can't do anything. So I talked to the big four. Now, that was a mistake. He shouldn't have talked to them first. But we talked about that. But he wanted to do that. Sometimes you got to touch the stove to find out it's hot. So he got basically, well, come back and see us when you have a deal. And while that was tempting to take that and go forward, I said, you really want to know your team. You don't want to be in a position where you talk to a seller, now you've got to do letters of intent, non-disclosure agreements, purchase and sale agreements, due diligence, and you're scurrying around trying to find any law firm or accounting firm that'll work with you.

2:59So that is not what you want to do. I said, drop down to the lower level. Most of the time, you're not that good in the beginning, like anything that you do. And so he said, well, I'm going to have to think about that. Usually, thinking about that means you're not going to do it. But to his credit, he decided to do it. And he came back in a week or two, whatever it was. And he said, you know, I didn't think that that would work. But I did end up getting a good accounting firm. I got them on 100 % discount for non-completed transactions and a small premium for successful transactions. And I'm glad I did.

3:37So that's one example of what would happen if you didn't follow the steps versus if you do follow the steps. I had a mentee who was in group coaching for a very short period of time. He ended up leaving for financial reasons. He ended up getting a chairman, and they just went ahead and did a deal. All the details of it, I don't know, but they did an 80 million euro deal. They then, and I had followed it up a couple times, followed it up, just asked him how it was going. He said, no, not good. We ended up moving too fast. The due diligence wasn't complete. The market changed against us. Customers changed and had problems.

4:18So now we're just trying to get out alive and sell this thing. And certainly I've had issues with people who have done that over and over again and who have taught themselves, yes, follow the steps. Super important. One of the things I wanted to mention was that if you question whether this is possible, and that's a normal thing to do, go over to the Bruce Whipple Pantheon. So that's Bruce Whipple, B-R-U-C-E-W-H-I-P-P-L-E, Pantheon, P-A-N-T-H-E-O-N.com, all one word. And you will see the first two inductees into the Pantheon, which are there. And watch those interviews. Watch the process that they went through.

5:09Watch how we work together. I remember Gabriel, when I congratulated him on his success, he now has 48 locations. But when it was probably 45 locations, I ended up talking to him. And it reminded me of something he wrote to me when I was congratulating him on the success he was having. And he wrote back to me, wouldn't be like that without you and your help, and I mean it. So I think he did the heavy lifting. In fact, as I frequently say, let's take Think out of that sentence. He did the heavy lifting. The other person in the Pantheon, Amir, you can see what he did as well. I hope that gives you the understanding that this is possible.

6:01I can't guarantee your success, but I cannot guarantee that you won't succeed. And both of those people, they were testament to perseverance, taking action, and finding ways to get things done. This is simple as far as the steps. I just outlined those at the beginning of this podcast. But simple is not the same as easy, and this is an emotionally hard process. You will deal with rejection. You will deal with problems along the way, board members that leave, die, quit, whatever. And so remember those things. For those that would like to work more closely with me, my best program is the VIP Mastermind program.

6:46There are a couple of spots in that. And my marketing director and I do two days of virtual training, which will be on the 19th and 20th. We do two of those a year for VIP members. If you have an interest in joining, you can join before the 19th and 20th, attend those two days of training. I think that would be very helpful for you. But just be sure you understand what's required, both from a time standpoint, from a financial standpoint. you can understand that by going to brucewhipple.com again go into the coaching and look at the VIP mastermind program ignore the sold out I put that there because I do not want to take your money until I talk to you and I'm sure that you're serious and I'm sure that you understand the financial commitment and will be a good fit for the group so I think all of those are really important to think about.

7:42Ultimately, know the steps, follow the steps, understand that other people have been successful in this, understand the reason you're doing it, get off the sidelines if you've been sitting there and decide, you know what, I'm going to take action, I'm going to move forward on this. And if you do, and if you take action, and if you use the help around you, you will have a much better chance of success than those that don't do that and decide to do it alone. Most of the time, as I say, they just don't have the experience to do that, and it does not end well. And I would love for this to end well for you, like those two members of the Pantheon.

8:22So go over there, watch those, you will get a lot of takeaways, and if you decide you want to go into the VIP Mastermind and take advantage of those two days of training coming up on September 19th and 20th, send me an email, bruce at brucewhipple.com, and we'll set up a time to talk. But only do that if you're serious and understand the time and financial commitments. Now, if you want to know how to start with some conversations, you can get the free course over at brucewhipple.com. If you want to go there directly, just brucewhipple.com forward slash free course. But whatever you do, understand the steps understand the process, understand the reasons you want to do this, and then surround yourself with good people and take massive action.

9:07Those that said stay focused, the longest win.