Should you sell your landscape business? Listen to the video to find out the 4 reasons you should make that move.
I often hear so many people talking about wanting to sell their company. Many people want to build their business for the next three years and then want to sell it. I’m sure I’ve said this in other videos. But, my argument is, if you build a real company that’s capable of running itself for the most part, if it doesn’t require your constant involvement and it makes you a nice amount of money, why would you want to sell your landscape business?
In my mind, the only reasons that you’d want to sell that business is one, you’re looking out into the future and there’s something that’s going to change from a technology standpoint or a market standpoint that is going to potentially seriously handicap your company. Or two, if your company’s worth, say, one million dollars and you currently make $100,000 a year off of that business, you could sell it, take the million less the taxes, and you can reinvest it and make more than $100,000 a year. The math would be you sell the company for a million, you get to keep 700,000. You now can take that 700,000 and you could earn 140,000 a year on that money.
Now, in the example I just gave I think that’s something like a 20% per year return, so good luck with that. That’s not easy. To get big returns like that you’re going to be an active manager in the next thing you’ve invested in. It may even be high risk and you have a chance of wiping out that principle.
A third reason you’d get out of the business is if you just simply hate the business or the industry so much and it’s not fixable, meaning you can’t turn it into a real company that runs itself, or you’re just completely sick of it and unwilling to do it. If you’re just completely fed up with the business and you’re just treading water, the business will eventually end. It will go under, and if you’re not willing to fix that or change that, then you’re probably better off selling the company, because eventually you’ll get nothing for it.
The fourth example is that you’re burned out, tired, and worn out. If you’re not willing to do the work to become a new person, to learn how to be a CEO, learn how to motivate and train your team, learn how to build a real company with some processes and procedures, learn how to do marketing and sales, your company will grind to a halt. If you’re not willing to do some reading, and maybe go to some conferences and network with other people, and really learn the business and learn what it takes to grow yourself and grow your team into the people that you require to be a great company, I would say you’re probably better off to sell your landscape business…maybe even getting a job.
I know that sounds really harsh, but these are the reasons you would sell. The idea of just selling to get a big amount of money, it generally has to be so big that you’re probably not really set. So the idea of selling is generally not the best approach to have in mind. The items that I just gave you, those are the reasons why you’d sell. I’d recommend that you look hard at building a real company that can run itself so that you have no need to sell…unless you just absolutely want to or get offered an insane amount of money to do so.
