We provide expertise in: Growth To Exit Planning, Mergers & Acquisitions, Business Valuations

Message from the CEO

Welcome to our home on the internet,

Our goal is to present to you expert information and education to help you Grow the Value of Your Business, Plan Your Exit, and Sell Your Business Successfully. In the sale of a business the standard industry approach favors buyers. This process is buy-side driven; the buyers get what they want at the expense of your lifetime efforts. At American Fortune, we have created a unique process that is sell-side driven. This process gives us and our client’s strategic advantages. The results are improved confidentiality, higher selling prices and outstanding terms for our clients.

Our philosophy is simple: We strive to serve our clients with unbiased and unconditional loyalty.

Give us a call and experience the American Fortune difference! When it comes to services in Growth to Exit Planning, Mergers & Acquisitions and Business Valuations, we excel in expertise and exceptional service. Don't call a business broker, call American Fortune, you will experience unparalleled results in selling your business.

Sincerely,

Brian S. Mazar , MBA,

Contact me personally at: This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it or 502-244-0480 ext. 24

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Who are our clients?

• Business owners with revenues from $3M - $100M
• Owners seeking to grow and prepare their business for sale
• Business owners with immediate desire to sell their business
• Business owners who want to learn how to sell their business

How we can help you?

• Help you to grow and prepare your exit from your business
• Maximize the value of your business and improve it's sellability
• Determine how much your business is worth in the market
• Prepare and sell your business for the best price and terms

The AMERICAN FORTUNE difference:

• You will pay no commission or fees on the Real Estate portion of your business sale
• We help you maximize the value of your business prior to taking it to the market
• Our businesses sell at an average of 98% of the listed price
• We sell over 90% of the businesses we represent vs the national average of 30%
• The sale of your business will be very confidential due to our unique sale processes

Our Value Added Services Outperform The Function Of Business Brokers

American Fortune Offers Sell Side And Buy Side Merger & Acquisition Services

American Fortune - Weekly Update

Weekly Article

Selling a business can be a time-consuming, tiresome process.  It doesn't have to be.  Read on for a different perspective.

Why Is the Average Business Sale Closing Rate Less than 10%? 

 In a survey of a broad cross-section of Merger and Acquisition (M&A) Advisors, one of the questions posed was, "What is the biggest challenge you face in your practice?"  They were given eight choices, including lack of financing and not enough buyers.  They were asked to pick their top three answers.  The top answer was seller value expectations with a 68.9% response rate.  I don't understand why this is the biggest challenge our industry faces.  From my perspective, this translates into a great deal of wasted effort on the part of our buyers, our seller clients and the M&A Advisor.  Statistics show that the average business sale closing ratio is less than 10%.  This is so important that I am going to say it again.  The business sale closing ratio is less than 10%.  It fails 90% of the time!  Why is that?

The following are 10 top key reasons why many businesses do not sell:

1. The business is extremely overpriced, in some cases by as much as 100%.
2. The business has several family members in top management.
3. The owner is the business so that the business cannot effectively run without the efforts of the owner.
4. One or more customers constitute more than 25% of the total business.
5. The industry that the business is in is diminishing or threatened by globalization.
6. The owner(s) is aging and has slowed-down, resulting in diminishing revenues.
7. The owner did not take time to perform exit planning.  To properly prepare the business for sale, the owner should have engaged an exit planning advisor 2-5 years prior to selling.
8. Many of the financial rewards of the businesses were taken by the owner in various "perks" which, from valuation, banking and market perspectives, will not make it to the EBIDTA as add backs.
9. The seller did not take time to become educated on the selling process, especially on the possible ugliness of the due diligence process by the buyer team.
10. The owner did not hire a proper professional such as a trusted M&A Advisor, as opposed to a broker that usually works both sides in a sale process.

Another major reason for the low closing ratio is that most businesses are attempting to be sold through newspaper ads, industry publication ads, email blasts to private equity groups, email blasts to other brokers and the favorite - putting the business on several business for sale web sites.  Almost all of these approaches invite individual buyers, not corporate buyers.  Individual buyers are looking to buy a job, to the extent that business sellers have inflated value expectations, these buyers have equally deflated valuation expectations.  It looks something like this:  "Do you have the $$ minimum needed for the cash at closing?"  "No, but I have investors."  These investors never show-up.

Without properly preparing the business for sale and arming oneself with a proven process, there will be a huge valuation gap between what the business seller expects to receive and what a reasonable buyer sees as fair market price.  The approach that many M&A Advisors take is not to resolve the differences, but to simply give in to the unreasonable expectations of the sellers and put the business up for sale based on the seller's terms.  Beware of this aproach when selecting the right M&A Advisor.  The proper approach is for theh M&A Advisor to tell the seller what they "need to know and not what they want to hear."  A business owner needs a trusted advisor, not someone who will do anything to get a business listing for sale only to have the business sit on the market for many years or never sell at all.

Selling a business takes years of preparation and the use of a proven process.  No business owner can keep their business running smoothly while at the same time sift through streams of bargain hunters who may or may not end-up purchasing their business.  Without a proven process and a good amount of preparation, these bargain hunters will chip away at the carefully developed price for the business.  After years of dealing with the constant challenges and questiosn of the so-called potential buyers, the business often suffers a significant drop in performance.  Key employees often get nervous or even leave, and (like an over-priced home) the business becomes stale while sitting on the market waiting for the right buyer to come along.

For owners of B2B type businesses and larger businesses, your buyer will not be an individual, but rather a corporation or a private equity group.  Let's focus here on the corporate buyer.  If the potential buyer is under $50 - $100 million in revenue, the M&A contact is usually the president.  If the company is larger, the contact is typically the head of strategy, business development or mergers and acquisitions.  These individuals are not visiting business for sale web sites or searching the business opportunities section of the newspaper.

The business owner's first task is to recognize that reaching these corporate buyers is a very difficult and labor-intensive process.  In these situations, it is wise to enlist the services of a M&A firm that specializes in reaching these targeted buyers.  These M&A professionals normally require either an up-front fee or a monthly fee in addition to the contingent success fee.

In summary, I cannot stress enough the need for proper preparation of a business for sale.  The process to properly prepare a business for sale takes approximately 2-5 years, it is not very costly, and does not take much time but the results can be phenomenal and will result in a much higher valuation.  The time invested in this process will also significantly imporve the merketability of a business.

Brian Mazar, MBA, CBI

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