Get More Out of LinkedIn

Are you using LinkedIn to full effect? For most entrepreneurs, the answer is “no.”

I’ve worked with and talked to hundreds of entrepreneurs and—generally speaking—most of them aren’t taking advantage of the potential of LinkedIn. That’s a real shame, because LinkedIn is a great place to generate leads and brand yourself and your business.

In fact, of the top three social networks—Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn—LinkedIn has the highest visitor-to-lead conversion rate (2.74%).

And, it’s not just about lead generation either.

If you use it right, LinkedIn is a great way to build strategic partnerships, hire great employees, and connect with people who can help your business succeed.

I could write a book on how to effectively use LinkedIn to grow your company, but it all really boils down to doing 3 things consistently:

1. Monitoring your profile views
2. Connecting with people
3. Being active in your home feed and groups.

1. Monitor Your Profile Views

By monitoring your profile views, you can see who is interested in you and your business. To view this data, go to Profile > Who’s Viewed Your Profile.

Use this knowledge to make sure your profile is attracting the right kind of people. If the people who are viewing your profile are not a good fit for you or your business, it’s time to rethink your profile.

2. Connect with People

People who have viewed your profile are more likely to connect with you. After all, they’ve already shown an interest in you!

So, if you see someone has viewed your profile that you think would be a great connection, send them a connection request with a personalized message. Sometimes people get a bit shy about connecting with people they don’t personally know, but LinkedIn is a networking platform—use it that way!

The most successful connection requests are personalized and don’t try to sell anything. Remember, you’re trying to start a relationship here, so start by complimenting achievements or showing interest in learning from them.

If they choose to connect with you, send them a short follow up message to say “thanks for connecting” and share a little more about you and your company. Don’t pitch your company, just give a little information about yourself and why you do what you do.

Sometimes, people will immediately want to talk about a potential business opportunity. Other times, you may just be building a relationship that will create value down the road.

3. Be Active on Your Account

LinkedIn is a social network, so be social! Scroll through your home page feed and group feeds daily, and look for opportunities to comment, share, and like people’s content.

The more people see you interacting with their content on LinkedIn, the more familiar they will become with you and your business. Plus, your comments, shares, and likes are like digital compliments that help people see you for the smart, engaged, likeable person you are!

As a result, when they need help from a business like yours, you’ll be the first person they think of.
Building and maintaining your LinkedIn network takes a little time and effort, but if you are consistently engaging on LinkedIn, you’ll quickly begin to build the relationships that will grow your business.

3 Ways to Help Women Entrepreneurs to Success

Entrepreneurship is increasingly recognized as a real opportunity for women in the new economy and a driver of economic growth. Between 2002 and 2007, the number of women-owned businesses grew by 20%, whereas the growth in men-owned firms was 5.5%. Furthermore, the economic impact of women-owned businesses is just under $3 trillion annually in the United States, and creates 16% of all U.S. jobs.

So the new economy clearly offers women great opportunities for entrepreneurship, but many women entrepreneurs say they feel isolated and lack networks, and that this slows down their business growth. Three ways to help women entrepreneurs to success are: mentoring and sponsoring, networking, and specifically designed training programs.

1. Mentoring and Sponsoring

Mentoring and sponsoring have a positive impact on entrepreneurship, and nonprofits, such as the Women Business Mentoring Initiative (WBMI) in Europe, are beginning to make a difference. Emilie Creuzieux, entrepreneur and CEO of Monbento, says that mentoring helps her to clarify the key challenges her company faces and to find her own solutions.

Her mentor, Jean-Jacques Berard, co-founder of Executive Interim Management, believes that learning comes through talking with others, and this is where mentoring is important. For him, a company is about the 3Ps: product, people, and process, and he helped Emilie analyze her company using this simple formula.

For Muriele Roos, founder of the women’s magazine Femme Majuscule, mentoring gives her the energy to keep going in the face of difficult challenges. Though not mentored through a structured program such as WBMI, U.S. entrepreneur Jane Chen, co-founder and CEO of Embrace, says that in setting up a business, there are many tough moments when you just want to quit—and mentoring can help you through them.

In a similar way, U.S. entrepreneur Clara Shih of Hearsay Social thinks that mentors and sponsors are important in helping women to lean in and take risks. For UK entrepreneur Abigail Holsborough of digital company RouteMap, one of the biggest obstacles is underselling herself when she needs to be out there pitching her business. She says that’s when she needs her mentors—formal mentors to help her develop her pitching skills, identify the weak points in her strategy, and address her business needs—and informal mentors to address her personal needs for reassurance and confidence.

2. Networks are Essential for Support

In addition to mentoring and sponsoring, networks are essential for support, for the sharing of business information, for gaining recognition, for marketing. Indeed, being undernetworked can seriously slow down business growth. But women entrepreneurs lag behind in the networking stakes.

Several reasons for this have been suggested in this book, but the view shared by everyone is that we need to change women’s attitudes to networking if they are to achieve success. Two programs in particular illustrate the importance of professional networks: Dell’s DWEN (Dell Women’s Entrepreneur Network) and Astia.

DWEN brings together top global women entrepreneurs to share best practices, opportunities for international expansion, and new resources that support the growth of their businesses. The members stay connected through social networking sites and local events held throughout the world. Stephanie Cardot, founder and CEO of TO DO TODAY, says that she joined the network after 11 years of being an entrepreneur alone—and that reconnecting with other women entrepreneurs gave her the second wind that she needed to reboot her ambitions and vision.

Astia is a network that promotes high-growth women entrepreneurs: serial entrepreneurs, angel investors, venture capitalists, corporate leaders, bankers, accountants, and lawyers who all donate thousands of hours each year to the network.

In addition to these two professional networks, Goldman Sachs’s 10,000 Women initiative was set up to support women entrepreneurs in developing countries by providing business and management education, mentors, networks, and links to capital. The results provide evidence that women can be successful entrepreneurs and that mentoring and networks are highly valued in the scaling-up process.

3. Specifically Targeted Training Programs

The third way to help women entrepreneurs to success is through specifically targeted training programs. In July 2015, Stanford Graduate School of Business delivered the first Women Entrepreneur Program, sponsored by BNP Paribas in conjunction with Women Business Mentoring Initiative. Programs such as these not only provide strategic insight and leadership training but are also excellent networking opportunities.

Top 5 Bad Sales Habits that Affect Performance

Your sales team can be one of your organization’s biggest assets, but individual members can also develop bad habits that impact overall performance. Although most bad habits can be corrected through sales executive training, the longer you ignore them, the more difficult habits are to break. Therefore, it’s important to act swiftly.

Here, are five of the most costly sales habits to look out for in your business:

1. Lack of Preparation

Preparation is a difficult balancing act in sales because it’s possible to under-prepare and over-prepare. However, a lack of preparation is fatal. In simplest terms, the more you can make a call or email relate directly to a prospect, the better your chances are of securing a sale. Use company websites, Facebook, LinkedIn, and Google, and always make your pitch relevant.

2. Staying in the Comfort Zone

One common and extremely costly trait among sales people is an over-reliance on familiar customers and an aversion to cold calling. For this reason, an emphasis needs to be placed on getting staff over their inhibitions during sales training. Calling existing client may involve less rejection, but hunting new clients is essential for growth.

3. Too Much Waiting Around

Time is money and whether sales people are delayed by the need for internal approval over pricing or they’ve developed a bad habit of wasting too much time on non-selling activities, waiting around will hinder performance. It’s essential that you develop a system where stalling is rare and a culture where your sales team members don’t want to stand still.

4. A Reliance on Intuition

Another common problem with sales team members is that they rely on intuition when there are better tools available to them. Many people think their ‘gut instinct’ can be trusted, but when it comes to sales, you’re better off doing proper research. From there, it’s easier to follow the leads most likely to end in a successful sale.

5. Giving Up Too Early

Finally, one of the most harmful sales habits is a tendency to give up too early. If a sales person does not receive a response to their initial outreach, rather than calling it a day, it often pays off to be persistent. In fact, some experts recommend that you should make at least five different outreach attempts unless the person asks you to stop.

When You’re Passionate About Your Cause, Success Will Follow

As the leader of a company that’s dedicated to developing solutions that help physicians diagnose, treat, and improve gynecologic health outcomes for women, I find myself facing sensitive, often heartrending situations. But I still consider myself incredibly blessed to be doing what I do.

All business owners and executives generally start on our paths because of a passion or need to solve a problem or fill a gap. The emotional connection we associate with our venture drives us forward — and I believe that passion and personal connection have been crucial to my own success.

My Passion Project Journey

Through my own personal connection to women’s health and cancer, I’ve always felt compelled to devote myself to helping women. Let’s face it: It’s been a man’s world — particularly in terms of making decisions about where research funding goes — and I wanted to enact change.

While I’m sensitive to breast cancer because of my mother’s battle with the disease, it’s also a heavily funded, well-recognized cause. No one seems to talk about ovarian cancer, yet there were 21,290 new cases in the U.S. alone in 2015, according to the Ovarian Cancer National Alliance. What’s more, ovarian cancer accounted for more than 14,000 deaths last year.

While these numbers may seem small, they really haven’t budged in more than 30 years. In this time frame, we’ve gone from large satellite phones to handheld smartphones and from record players to digital music, but as a society, we’ve barely made a dent in ovarian cancer.

Detecting ovarian cancer is tricky, as symptoms are largely mild until the later stages of the disease. As a result, more than 70 percent of women aren’t diagnosed until later stages — when the five-year survival rate sits below 20 percent, according to the American Cancer Society. This is in stark contrast to the 92 percent of Caucasian women and the 80 percent of African-American women who survive breast cancer.

There will be a day when women seldom die from breast cancer; I want to see that day for ovarian cancer, too.

Using Your Passion to Fuel Your Business

In the beginning, I wasn’t sure what mission I was on, but now that I’ve sat in this chair as CEO for over a year, it’s been incredible. I took actionable steps in my business and my career, and it shows. Today, people are gravitating toward us because we’re passionate about what we do.

So what can you do to take your passion on the road and build your business and your career?

1. Make sure your passion sparks awareness.

Don’t underestimate the power of your target audience, but keep in mind that you should also focus on the audience that’s not there yet. Developing awareness will create momentum.

2. Find a media source and campaign that works for your audience.

When we started a Facebook campaign, we weren’t sure how to build awareness. But we stuck by the motto that if we helped women, they’d help us. Soon, we went from 10 Facebook hits a week to a few thousand, and we just hired our first digital marketing employee.

Don’t underestimate the power of women and the power of social media and digital marketing. Focus on educating and informing your audience members, and they’ll find you.

3. Form your ultimate dream team to support you.

These are the people who will drive the momentum and turn your vision into reality. We formed our own ovarian cancer dream team in early 2016. Made up of thought leaders in women’s healthcare and support, we now have over $7.5 million in grants to dedicate to ovarian cancer research. Fill your dream team with people who will propel your vision forward.

If you’re not following your passion, what’s stopping you? Having a personal tie to your business and using that momentum to your benefit and others’ will keep you focused on the adventure, not the work. For me, my personal experiences opened my eyes to a real need, and I haven’t looked back since.

HOW TO SAVE A DYING BUSINESS

The cyclical nature of business suggests that at some point, your business is going to go through a down phase—a recession and oppression that is either due to owner mismanagement or the overall economy. Many know the statistics of business failure, what is less known is the statistics of business survival.

Saving a dying business that has gone through a major downturn is one of those things legends are made of. Here are three tips to do it:

1. Recognize Your Business is in Trouble

One of the biggest mistakes with small business owners is not fully recognizing their own business cycles. Small business owners tend to think with their hearts instead of with their pocket books when it comes to managing difficult times. Thinking that you can ride out the storm will leave you bankrupt and closing your doors.

If you have not and do not understand your own business cycle, start tracking and researching it. What months are traditionally high income months and which are low income months? What items/services do you sell the most of and to whom? Do you only serve clients in a particular industry or area? How diversified is your clientele?

These are questions that you need to answer in order to determine the state of your business. When your largest client is affected by the economy, so are you. If you do not know what is affecting them, you will not know what is affecting you. If you start to notice that the months that should be producing high income are not producing what you expected, you know that there may be a problem. Do not wait until the bottom falls out to assess the state of your business and how well you are doing.

2. Adjust and Shift

As a small business owner, you should be able to adjust and shift your business as necessary. Many small business owners have difficulty making necessary changes because they do not know where to start. The first inclination may be to cut expenses, but perhaps the issue is how the money is being spent and not how much money is being spent.

If you are seeing a drop in income, shifting emphasis on certain aspects of your business may be important. While increasing the marketing budget may be necessary, perhaps what you need is an increase in technology to create systems that ultimately result in higher profits.

You may have to retrain yourself and employees to the new economy and way of doing things. You may even have to hire advisors. Loss in income makes small business owners want to store money, when what is really needed is to spend. Thoughtful investment into processes that will make your business better should be the number one priority.

If you have been working in a certain industry for a long period of time, this may be difficult.  However, if your chosen industry is going down as a whole, a new market is required. Begin making efforts to shift your target market to attract new clients.

3. Protect Yourself First

I see many small business owners who risk everything to save their businesses. They deplete their savings accounts, borrow from friends and family, and get a second mortgage on a house. In the attempt to save their business, they put their families at risk.

While I truly understand the need to save your baby (your dream), it’s not worth making your family homeless. I’ve seen too many business owners lose everything (I do mean everything) trying to save a business. It is just not worth it.

It doesn’t make you a failure if your business cannot survive its current form. You can always rebuild and rebrand. Sometimes, you just have to cut your losses and start over. That is okay. Many successful business owners have done the same. I had a client who had to shut his doors and eventually started a new business that was more profitable than the first. Create a line for yourself that you are not willing to cross no matter the state your business is in.

If your business is struggling, you can make the changes necessary to save it. In order to do so, you must be willing to open yourself up to new opportunities and seek help from others to guide you through the process.

launching your freelance business.

You’ve been thinking about it for years. It’s an idea that floats around your head at least once a day. It’s a plan you want to begin, but you just aren’t sure how to start. Well, now it’s time. Here is your beginner’s guide. Let’s launch your freelance business.

With these simple 11 steps, you can get started and build a solid foundation with plenty of room for growth. These steps will get you going in the right direction and help you finally turn your hobby into a bonafide business — even if you run it in your spare time until it’s strong enough to support you.

1. Start thinking about your freelance business like a business.

The process of starting a freelance business always begins with mindset. You simply cannot start and grow a profitable business if you are still thinking about it like a hobby. You need to start thinking about your work like the business that it is. This confidence will drive the following steps.

2. Set up a financial reporting system.

Start tracking both your business expenses and income. At the beginning, you might not have a separate banking account for your personal and businesses finances. That’s OK, as long as you track the transactions.

Set up something as simple as a spreadsheet or get an affordable accounting software like GoDaddy Online Bookkeeping to start recording your transactions. Getting into the habit of doing this will save you lots of time and energy down the road.

3. Start saving your receipts.

As you start tracking your business expenses, hold onto your receipts. When you have a freelance business, you can write off your business expenses on your taxes. Holding onto the receipts will organize and legitimize your records and make your taxes easier to complete. For more information, check out CPA Chris Peden’s series of GoDaddy Garage posts.

4. Do work for free.

Yes, you read that right. When you are just getting started, you might need to produce some work without compensation. This will help you determine your rates, collect reviews, and build your portfolio. You may be able to skip this step if you already have been producing the work that you intend to sell. But if you are starting from scratch, do some free work for a nonprofit or for a client you want to acquire. You might not get compensation, but you will get the what you need to complete the next three steps.

5. Use a timer for your projects.

Time is money for freelancers. So make sure you get enough money for your time. Use a timer to track the amount of time you put into each project to ensure you are getting an hourly rate that suits your needs. (Time your free projects to get a feel for how much time you need to complete each project or assignment.) Try Toggle, a free online time tracker.

6. Collect testimonials and reviews.

Testimonials from past clients will be one of the best ways to get new clients. So get collect reviews from anyone you’ve worked with in the past, and always ask for a review when a project reaches completion.

7. Create a professional portfolio.

New clients will want to see past work, so curate all of your past projects into a portfolio. If you haven’t done much work for clients, pull from projects created for school or pleasure. (You can do work for free for clients so you can start to fill your portfolio.)

If you’re a creative-type using WordPress, check out some great portfolio plugins to showcase your work online.

4 Simple Ways to Turn Your Hobby into a Business

What does it take to turn a hobby into a business? For many, the very idea can be daunting. Yet just as any journey begins with a single step, so too does the union between personal and professional fulfillment.

Starting a business will require complete dedication from all business owners regardless of gender, but a number of specific opportunities cater to women in particular. Women-owned businesses have, by the way, grown by 74% between 1997 and 2015, according to the American Express Open 2015 State of Women-Owned Businesses Report. So now is a great time to turn your hobby into a business.

Here are four ways to begin to pursue your hobby professionally:

1. Educate Yourself

Learn as much as you can about your particular field. Subscribe to trade publications, check out books from the local library, and read blogs. Not only are you expanding your knowledge base within your field, but by planting these “research seeds” early on, you give yourself an edge.

Who knows what you will learn that will allow you to enhance the product or service that you offer and separate you from a competitor. Lay a strong foundation for the transition from hobby to business by first being knowledgeable about your field.

2. Contact Your Local Business Development Organization

The website of the Small Business Administration is a great place to start. With at least one district office in every state and the District of Columbia, this government agency provides support to small business owners and entrepreneurs.

It offers tips on topics such as crafting business plans, securing loans, choosing a business structure, filing taxes, and contracting programs for women-owned small businesses. Also, doing a simple Google search with the terms “small business+(state where you reside)” will yield a surprising number of results.

3. Surround Yourself with Like-Minded Entrepreneurs

Does a meet-up group exist specifically geared toward your hobby, or more broadly, toward entrepreneurs in the early phases of their businesses? Meetup.com is a great place to find individuals with common business interests in particular cities.

From Startup Grind in Charleston to SmartSuccess Business Network of Seattle, networking groups exist everywhere. Also, local chambers of commerce have networking events with local businesses that have established themselves in their communities.

4. Lean in to Programs Geared toward Women

Sometimes, it’s easy to feel guilty when a particular program caters to you, as if you’re at a disadvantage or something. Maybe you feel like you don’t deserve it and should be treated “equally”—however you define the term. Yet when women own 30% of businesses while making up half of the US population, and in sum, account for 4% of annual business revenue, maybe it makes sense to specifically target a group to improve the numbers (Source: American Express Open 2015 State of Women-Owned Businesses Report).

So don’t feel guilty checking out the Women’s Business Enterprise National Council, the U.S. Women’s Chamber of Commerce, or a local organization geared toward women business owners. And then pay it forward by encouraging the next generation—male and female—to determine their own paths by starting businesses.

This list is by no means exhaustive. Every business must chart its own path, as guided by the entrepreneur at its helm. What this list does provide is a starting point for any individual who is interested in doing more with her hobby and wants to pursue it professionally. Use these tips to take the first steps towards turning your hobby into a business to call your own.

WHAT IS MENTAL ILLNESS COSTING YOUR COMPANY?

May is Mental Health Month, and a time to reflect on the impact that mental disorders has on the workplace.

Consider these facts:

About 18% of the U.S. population experiences some type of mental illness.

The indirect cost of untreated mental illnesses in the U.S. is $100 billion.

More days of work are lost to mental illnesses than to physical illnesses.

What can employers do?

Because of the statistical likelihood that you’ll have workers with depression, anxiety, bi-polar disorder, or other mental illness, it’s advisable to recognize the challenge and rise up to meet it.

Eliminate the stigma. Employees suffering from a mental illness may be reluctant to share this information because of the perceived stigma. Companies can work to combat this notion and treat all health conditions equally.

Provide outreach. Owners and co-workers don’t have to be doctors to recognize when someone is having a problem. The person just isn’t acting like him/herself, the work isn’t up to par, and sick days are being used up. Understanding that the person is having a problem and encouragement for the person to seek help is doable in a company no matter how small.

Get training. Likely you have employees trained in CPR, but what about first aid for mental health? Take a Mental Health First Aid course to learn how to help someone experiencing a mental health crisis.

Resources

If you want to learn more, check out the Partnership for Workplace Mental Health. Here you’ll find publications, surveys, and employer case examples illustrating successful employer practices.

Join the conversation on Twitter at #mentalillnessfeelslike.

Photos: VP Yemi Osinbajo arrives Zambia for the Annual General Meeting of the African Development Bank

Vice President Yemi Osinbajo arrived Lusaka Zambia yesterday night to represent Nigeria at the 51st Annual General Meeting of the African Development Bank, holding this week. He is pictured with AfDB President and former Nigerian Minister of Agricultur

How to Buy a Business: The Ultimate Guide

Where to Find Businesses For Sale

Businesses are available for sale in many places. Often times, the best opportunities aren’t advertised, so it’s a good idea to begin your search by asking fellow business owners or contacts in the industry for leads.

Other sources include the following:

• Online business-for-sale sites – We recommend BizBuySell.combecause it’s the largest online database of businesses for sale.
• Business brokers – Business brokers represent the seller and are paid by the seller. However, they can help you find businesses for sale that you might not find on your own.
• Newspaper classifieds and industry publications – Sometimes, the traditional route works best. While some small businesses no longer advertise in newspapers and publications, many still do.

If you’re interested in buying a franchise, then head over to the franchise’s website. Most franchisors list franchising information online and will list phone numbers to call to get further information.

More Resources:

• Where To Find Businesses for Sale – Ultimate Guide
• Buying a Franchise – Is it the Right Option for You?
• Top 8 Sites to Find Franchises for Sale

Questions to Ask When Buying a Business

When buying a small business, there’s a lot of information to uncover. You should know which questions to ask the seller so that you get all the necessary details and avoid buyer’s remorse. Below, I’ve listed some of the most important questions to ask. For a full list of questions to ask, see our article Questions to Ask When Buying a Business.

Questions to Ask Yourself:

• Why buy this business and not just start one from scratch? Are there benefits to buying, such as a great location, existing customer base, etc.?
• Do I have interest and experience in what the business does?
• Is there a positive outlook for this type of business? What’s the competition like?
• Can I afford to buy the business?
  • Do I need a loan? If so, can I qualify for a bank loan?
  • Do I have personal assets, such asretirement funds orhome equity, that I can use to buy the business?

Basic Questions to Ask the Seller:

• What does the business do?
• Why is the business for sale?
• How old is the business, and how long has it been operating under the current owner?

Financial Performance of the Business:

• What have been the annual gross revenues of the business for the past two years and to date?
• What have been the annual net profits of the business for the past two years and to date?

Price of the Business:

• What is the purchase price, and what assets are included in that price? (Most small business sales are structured like a sale of assets)
• How was the purchase price determined?
• Is seller financing available? If so, how much?

Day-to-Day Management of the Business:

• Does the business currently lease space? If so, will the lease end soon and need to be renegotiated?
• What licenses or permits will I need to operate the business?
• How does the business generate revenue?
  • One-time payments for goods and services? Subscription model? Long-term or short-term contracts?
    • If there are existing contracts, can they be assigned to the new owner?

In general, talk to as many different people as you can about the business’ history and prospects for future success. What do employees have to say about the business currently? What about customers and vendors? You should also try to find out how dependent the business is on the current owner? If a business is highly dependent on the current owner, it may not survive a transition of ownership.

More Resources:

• Questions to Ask When Buying a Business – Ultimate Guide

How to Value a Business

The seller will give you a purchase price for the business, but how do you know if the price is accurate? It’s important to do a valuation of the business.

At the very beginning, you should get a good ballpark estimate of how much the business is worth. To get a rough estimate of a business’ valuation, use our Business Valuation Calculator. This calculator tells you the approximate worth of a small business based on its annual revenues and profits.

After getting a rough estimate, but before it’s time to sit down with the seller and negotiate a price, you’ll need to finetune the valuation. To do that, you can get a professional valuation from an expert such as BizEquity. Alternatively, you can do it yourself by calculating the seller discretionary earnings (SDE) for the business. Seller discretionary earnings are the earnings for the business with certain expenses added back in to give a true picture of the business’ earnings. Once you get the SDE, you multiply that by an industry multiple to get the business’ valuation. Click here to read How to Value a Business, which tells you step-by-step instructions on how to calculate SDE and make a business valuation.

More Resources:

• How to Value a Business – Ultimate Guide
• How Much Does Buying a Business Cost?
• Business Valuation Calculator
• Get a Professional Business Valuation with BizEquity

Documents That Need to Be Exchanged When Buying a Business

Buying a business is a paperwork intensive endeavor. In order to avoid legal and financial troubles down the line, it’s important to exchange all the necessary paperwork and have it reviewed by an attorney and accountant.

As soon as you’re serious about buying a business, you should gather financial documents for the business, including the following:

• Last 3 years of the business’ tax returns
• Last 2 years and year-to-date income statement
• Last 2 years and year-to-date balance sheet
• Organizational documents (e.g. articles of incorporation, certificate of good standing from the Secretary of State, etc.)
• Existing contracts
• Commercial lease for the office building or business space
• Franchise Disclosure Document(if the business is a franchise)

Finally, at closing, you’ll need to exchange the following documents:

• Purchase Agreement (deal contract)
• Promissory Notes and collateral agreements for any financing that you’ll be using.
• Commercial lease (if applicable)
• Transfer documents for any vehicles that may be part of the purchase
• Bill of sale – transfers ownership of tangible business assets
• Non-compete agreement from the seller (if applicable)
• Bulk sale documents – these govern the sale of inventory
• IRS Form 8594 – shows how assets are allocated during the purchase
• Consultation/employment agreement – this is necessary if the owner will be staying on for some time to aid with the transition of the business

To access free templates of the documents above, see our article Questions to Ask When Buying a Business.

More Resources:

• Questions to Ask When Buying a Business – Ultimate Guide

Determining Your Budget for Buying a Business

Most people who think about how to buy a business forget the most important thing: setting a budget! Here are a few steps to help you figure out how much you can afford:

1. Add up your liquid assets – Liquid assets are assets like cash, checkings and savings accounts, and investments that you can easily convert to cash. Your liquid assets tell you how much you can invest up front in the business. In most cases, you’ll have to make at least a 20 % equity injection into the business upfront. For example, if you have $50,000 in liquid assets, you would have a sufficient down payment on a business that’s worth $250,000 or less.
2. Consider other debt that you have – Do you have a mortgage? A student loan? Credit card debt? If so, you’ll need to factor in those obligations when deciding how much you can spend on a business acquisition. Calculate your Debt-to-Income (DTI) Ratio by dividing your monthly debt payments by your pre-tax monthly income. You can include your spouse’s income if you’re married. Ideally, your DTI should be below 40 %.
3. Evaluate the business’ cash flow– If you have a particular business in mind that you’d like to buy, divide its monthly net operating income by your monthly loan payments. This is your Debt Service Coverage Ratio (DSCR). Ideally, your DSCR should be at least 1.25. Anything less, and you’ll have difficulty paying back your loan with the business’ current cash flow.

Doing these things should give you a good estimate of what you can afford. As you find businesses for sale and work with sellers and lenders, you might refine this initial estimate.

More Resources:

• How Much Does Buying a Business Cost?
• 25 Franchises Under $25K
• Best Franchises Under $10K

Financing Options for Buying a Business

If you’re planning to buy a business, then more likely than not, you’ll need some kind of financing to make it happen. There are several financing options for buying a business, chief among them the following:

1. Seller financing
2. SBA loan or bank loan
3. Rollover for Business Startups (ROBS)
4. Other types of financing

Seller financing is a loan provided by the current owner of the business. Usually, seller financing covers 30-60 % of the purchase price of a business. Banks and other lenders look more favorably upon deals that include seller financing versus those that don’t because it shows that the seller is invested in the business’ success.Read more about seller financing by clicking here.

Seller financing is often used in conjunction with a bank loan or SBA loan. To qualify for a bank or SBA loan, however, you generally need to have a good credit score (above 680) and some experience in the industry or in running a business. Also, the business should have a history of strong revenues and profits.

If you’re not able to qualify for an SBA loan or bank loan, another good option can be to invest your own retirement money in the purchase of the business.  A Rollover for Business Startups (ROBS) lets you do this without paying early withdrawal fees or income taxes. To do a ROBS, you should have at least $50,000 in a 401(k), traditional IRA, or other eligible retirement account (Roth IRAs aren’t eligible). Setting up a ROBS can be complicated though. We advise getting professional assistance from a company such as Guidant, our recommended ROBS provider.

Finally, consider other alternatives such as getting a consumer loan, borrowing from family and friends, or getting a home equity loan. If you’re buying a franchise, the franchisor may offer some amount of in-house financing. We cover the range of options in our article How to Get a Loan to Buy a Business.

More Resources:

• Seller Financing
• Best Rollovers for Business Startups Providers
• How to Get a Loan to Buy a Business
• Franchise Financing

Your Allies in Buying a Business: Accountant, Lawyer, and Broker

If you’ve read all the way through this guide and are feeling overwhelmed at the amount of work involved in buying a business, don’t worry because you don’t have to do it alone. There are three people that can be immensely helpful to you throughout your journey of buying a business:

• Your accountant – An accountant is useful primarily for evaluating the financial condition of the businesses that you are prospecting. When buying a business, you’re going to exchange a lot of paperwork with the seller, and a lot of this paperwork will be financial in nature. It will include the business’ recent tax returns, income statements, balance sheets, and cash flow statements. Without a qualified accountant to review these, it be difficult to know if a business is a good investment.
• Your lawyer – A lawyer will be necessary for the nuts-and-bolts of the deal. He or she can help you draft a purchase agreement, obtain any permits that you’ll need for the business, review existing contracts of the business that you’ll be responsible for, and more. In addition to that, a lawyer can help you uncover any problems with the business early on. For example, if the business is currently operating in violation of zoning laws, that could come back to haunt the new owner.
• Your business broker – Lastly, consider working with a business broker. A business broker represents the seller and has a fiduciary duty to the seller. The seller pays the broker’s commission. However, a broker can be very valuable to you as a buyer in sending you listings for sale, negotiating with the seller, and bringing some structure to the process of exchanging information and documents. To find a business broker, a good place to start is the International Business Brokers Association, or ask a fellow business owner for a referral.

Consider hiring each of these three people to make the process of buying a business a little less stressful for yourself.

Bottom Line

Buying a business is an exciting time! However, there is a lot to consider. You should be ready to devote a significant amount of time and effort into finding the best business to purchase, valuing the business, exchanging paperwork, and financing the purchase. Good luck!

WHO IS RESPONSIBLE FOR TOMATOES SCACITY PMB OR DANGOTE?

I have read in the recent times several uncomplimentary writeup accusing the present administration for the scarcity of tomatoes while some have put the blame on Dangote but in making effort to set the record straight on the tomatoes production that is under siege in Nigeria , I will want to blame the information handlers of the

Government for not communicating well with us . The real reason for the tomatoes scarcity is a devastating pest attack which has affected this year’s harvest, the pest call ‘Tuta absoluta’ has reportedly affected tomato farms in Jigawa, Kaduna, Kano, Katsina and Plateau states, unfortunately about 75 per cent of the total tomatoes consumed is being produced in Kano and Jigawa .The tomatoes plague came into the country unnoticed and caught both farmers and the government unaware. I also think a section of the Nigerian media has not been fair to Aliko Dangote for accusing him for tomatoes shortage when Dangote Farms Tomato Processing Factory had to halt operations in its $20 million tomato paste facility due to a scarcity of tomatoes, barely two months after beginning operations , According to Dangote , he established the tomato processing plant to help reduce wastage of the tomatoes and to also minimise the amount of imported tomato pastes in the Nigerian market because from the statistic obtained from the Federal Ministry of Agriculture, Nigeria produces about 1.5 million tons of tomatoes a year, but over 900,000 tons is lost to rot.
The ‘Tuta absoluta’ has the ability to destroy a whole tomato farm within 48 hours and is also very difficult to control as it has a high mutation capacity with the ability to develop a resistance to insecticides. It took Sudan about three years to recover from a similar attack in 2010 but the good news however is that the Agric Ministry is fast putting the attack under control .
Setting the record straight, Tomato production is under siege not because of Buhari’s Economic policy or Dangote factory but because of the pest called Tuta absoluta ,
Tuta absoluta is a very harmful leaf mining moth with a strong preference for tomatoes