Most business books are read by people who don't own businesses. The Messy Marketplace is different. Brent Beshore wrote it for the actual owner — the one with $3 million in revenue and one kid who maybe wants the business and another who definitely doesn't.
If you're within five years of selling and you haven't read it, stop reading this and go buy it. It costs less than a tank of gas.
The financial part is the easy part. The hard part is everything around it: buyers who waste your time, lawyers who run up the bill, the team that finds out before you wanted them to. The book's whole premise is that the marketplace is messy because it involves humans. A good advisor's job is to keep the mess off your desk.
Beshore is gentle about this. We'll be less gentle. A staggering percentage of inbound buyer inquiries are tire-kickers, brokers shopping a deal they don't actually have, or buyers who couldn't get financing on a Honda Civic. A real process is, in large part, about filtering.
You spent thirty years building this. You sold it on a Thursday. On Monday you woke up with nowhere to be. Owners have told us the year after sale was the hardest of their lives. Plan for it the way you plan for the deal.
The buyers who pay top dollar usually pay it for a reason — they want the business to look a specific way, and they'll spend the first year after close making it look that way. Sometimes that's fine. Sometimes it means the people you loved get laid off in February. Picking the buyer is at least as important as picking the price.
Beshore wrote it from the buyer's side — he runs Permanent Equity. The book is a generous look at how a good buyer thinks. But it's not a manual for the owner. We're the manual for the owner. We've sat in the chair and across from it. Read the book, then come grab a coffee.