Four years ago, I decided it was time to look at selling my franchised employment agency. After 16 years I was approaching retirement age and decided I would like to work on something that would not require 40-50 hours of work each week. At about the same time, one of my key employees approached me about the possibility of taking over the business some day down the road. At the time, I felt it was an ideal situation since the employee had experience in all areas of the business, had just gotten their Masters Degree in Business, and was probably the one person I would have chosen to take over the business. After several months of negotiation and meetings, including approval by a lender that they would finance the deal, they advised me that their spouse was reluctant to put up their home as collateral for a loan and would not be going ahead with the deal. Shortly after, they left the company.
A few months later, I told the story to a neighboring franchisee and they informed me they were looking to expand and would like to discuss acquiring me. Again, after several months of meetings and negotiations, including financing approval by a West Coast bank, they decided not to proceed, mainly because me business was larger than theirs and it would have been too big of a step forward for them.
Shortly thereafter, another adjoining franchisee had heard that I might be selling. In this case, it was the largest franchise in the system, so size was not an issue. In addition, they had done several acquisitions of other operations near them, so they appeared to be the ideal buyer. After several visits to all the offices by the owner and spouse (who were both active in the business) things finally looked good. Then suddenly things stopped happening and one day I called and they told me they were no longer interested, and could not tell me the reasons. I found out later that they had been approached also by a buyer who made them an offer they couldn’t refuse, so they actually sold their business and retired.
So here we are, after 3 years of work with 3 buyers, nothing had been accomplished. At this point, I decided to call Karen Rehn at Acquisition Business Advisory Services and list the company with them. Within 3 weeks, they found a very qualified buyer and 5 weeks later I had a letter of intent to purchase the business in hand. 30 days later that sale closed. I was very impressed with the profile of my business ABAS put together and the professional manner of all the employees of ABAS demonstrated.
Jerry Hegy, Past Owner Remedy Staffing