Well, not right this second, but coming very soon! I reactivated my CA Real Estate License, which is what is required to be able to directly broker businesses in CA (and for other states that require a license, there is a reciprocal agreement). So now we can directly sell a business in any state!
Before I got started in CapForge Accounting, I was a full-time business broker for four years and sold thirty-six businesses in that time. As an independent one-person shop, that is a pretty significant volume and even more so considering it was from 2008-2012- some pretty terrible years for business in general. Not to toot my own horn too much(!), but I was a pretty good broker. I suspect a lot of it was due to my experience as a business owner myself, as well as being good at communication, which is a key skill in this space.
Check out what else we’ve been up to!
- Matt Reviews: Did This Product Get the Market Research it Needed? (Short Video)
- Matt Reviews: Is This the Business You Need to Start? (Short Video)
- Matt Reviews: Is It Easy to Start a Cleaning Business? (Short Video)
- Business for Sale, Would I Buy It? | General Construction (Short Video)
- How Sellers Can Get The Maximum Legal Ecommerce Income Tax Savings (Podcast)
I really enjoyed the work, but the biggest problem I ran into was business sellers who didn’t have books and records in any kind of shape to sell their businesses for anything like the full value.
Seeing this problem over and over, it occurred to me that there seemed to be a real gap in availability for quality, professional bookkeeping done at a fixed, flat fee. So I launched myself into the accounting space, and it took over my life.
Now, I am in a place where the accounting works really well, and I can finally get back to brokering. The huge difference now is, I can work with current clients whose books are already set up and ready to go!
For anyone else, not a current client, I can directly work with them to get them all fixed up. I don’t have to wait for them to find someone who can do it, understands the specific needs of presenting books for a business for sale, and who also understands the need for speed here!
I am excited to see how much better this will make the process for sellers and buyers (who, of course, always get a vote, haha!) and the whole exit process in general.
Even more exciting, this is just one of a variety of changes and improvements we are working on this year. I have a vision for CapForge to be bigger and better than ever and to offer much more to our clients than just bookkeeping and tax.
While those services are still going to be the mainstay of our business, I am looking forward to adding more on the growth and advisory side, of which exit planning and execution is just one aspect.
I rebranded us a year ago as CapForge- Accounting for Growth, with the specific intention of focusing us on helping firms grow their businesses, not just look back at historical results as accounting tends to do.
You need both- the data from where you’ve been and the plan for where you are going, including an eventual exit, whether that means a year from now or a decade. Businesses built with an eventual exit in mind tend to be run better and more profitably than those with no plan!
So if you are thinking about an exit and want to see how we can help, up to and including the valuation and actual exit, let me know!