The $50M Company That Almost Couldn’t Be Sold | Robert E. Jones

Robert, who are you and what do you do?

My name is Robert Jones.

The company is Corbata.

We do enterprise and exit readiness for government contractors.

We were in Albuquerque just a couple of weeks ago, and we had a similar conversation, and I was absolutely enthralled with all of the content that you were providing.

So I think this is going to be a great conversation for folks to hear from, to learn from, and to listen to.

First question that just got off the top of my head, in terms of exit planning, does anybody ever actually plan for the exit when they start?

I think one of the questions people should be asking soon after you start the business is like, how are you going to get out? What is your plan? And I think people maybe don't think about that because most relationships, we don't start saying, how am I going to get out of this relationship? Maybe that mentality carries over to business, but yeah, it's like, you got to think that you're going to exit your business.

And that's scary for people to think about in here.

Right.

And maybe it sounds negative, but it is the truth.

You will exit your business.

The goal in my work and for a lot of people in my field is that you exit the business on your terms, in your timing, and hopefully at the price and the value that you want.

If those three things happen, then my work with you has been successful.

Who doesn't want to make a bunch of money after they leave their company and be able to retire and enjoy the rest of their lives, right? So in these situations in which you get engaged with companies, what are some of the biggest things that you find that folks are unprepared for or they haven't thought of or they just need to give some more consideration to?

So the first that I would say is that when you start talking about exit planning, people immediately begin to think of M&A, PE, private equities, and like that.

And certainly in the broader exit planning world, those are pieces of the puzzle.

What I like to say is that if you're talking to an M&A advisor or an investment banker, it's likely that you're really far right in the timeline, meaning that you're at the transaction or you've got the transaction lined up and that's where you're focused, And unfortunately, at that point, the value of the business is what it is.

There's no runway left to change the value of the business.

My work is much farther left in the timeline, ideally two to five years before you even think about a transaction.

Because over here, farther left in the timeline is where we have that opportunity to impact, right? We can address policies, procedures, the operations of the business.

that affect not only the short term profitability, but actually help you build a business that has value over time.

It also gives us an opportunity to untangle the business from the business owner.

So I think that's the other thing that maybe people don't think about in this process is you start a business.

Oftentimes it's just you or maybe it's you and a family member or you and a business partner.