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Poised for Exit

Welcome to the Poised for Exit podcast! Poised for Exit is an under 30-minute strategic planning guidance podcast for busy small business owners. Each week you’ll hear certified exit planning advisor, Julie Keyes, talk with a range of entrepreneurs and professionals about preparing your business for a future transition. Guests at every stage of company ownership will share their personal stories and lessons learned about topics such as the anatomy of the exit planning process, developing a growth strategy, how to sell on your terms, exit planning for women small business owners, handling business diversity, and how to sell a family business. Whether you’re planning an exit in the near future or not, this show will provide you with the same action-oriented content that Julie utilizes while consulting with Keyestrategies clients. Building an exit strategy can be overwhelming, especially with all the decisions and details you have to consider. “Poised for Exit” will simplify the process and help you unwrap the unknowns, giving you more confidence in your planning process. Previous episodes are available for download, so if you are new to our show, you can listen to them in any order that suits you. Join us each week for timely, relevant content that will surely impact your business exit outcome! Subscribe to our newsletter below to receive your weekly episode link and stay updated on new strategic planning content. Find “Poised for Exit” on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, Google Play, iHeart Radio, Amazon Music, and others. Thank you to our Sponsors: Sunbelt Business Advisers and JAK CPA's. A special note of thanks to Tyler Keyes who produced the music for the “Poised for Exit” show.

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Poised for Exit

Avoid M&A Pitfalls with Trust as a Guiding Principle

September 18, 2024 • Julie Keyes • Season 1 • Episode 211

Avoid M&A Pitfalls with Trust as a Guiding Principle

We had Matt Hartranft in the studio today! Matt is a partner and M&A attorney with Brutlag, Trucke and Dougherty. We spent a great deal of time discussing how established trust is essential in shortening the duration of the deal to closing, and in deal negotiations in general.

Matt says that in the dealmaking world, trust is his guiding principle and is more than just a values based philosophy. We talked about how his stories tied in so well with our previous guests, Brian Slipka and David Horsager, who both focused on trust as their content topic, because it's impacting so many facets of the business world, especially the transaction space.

Matt shared a story about a buyer of a client selling his business,who was a much larger organization and initially required revenue and profit guarantees from the sellers for the first year or two, until they got to know the employees and leadership, and then realized that they didn't need to question the integrity of what they initially thought was a risky unknown. This turn came about due to the honesty and behavior of the team they were acquiring; knowing they could trust in what they said made all the difference.

Matt also said that the community of common players in the M&A space, especially in the Midwest are many times known, which can help reduce the amount of time a deal takes to complete, thereby reducing the billing invoices, etc. As we've said before on Poised for Exit, "trust is measurable".

Listen to Matt's advice and stories here!

Connect with Julie Keyes, Keyestrategies LLC
Founder, Consultant, Author, Pod-caster and Instructor