The New Year’s Goals Every Buyer and Seller Should Have for Their Best Year Yet
No new gym membership necessary to get life-changing results
It’s the first week of January, which means you’ve already been inundated with tips for new year’s goal setting, promises of your dream body, and upsells for every makeover product imaginable.
Yep, it’s that time of year again. The one where you feel pressure from every direction to get your new self and life together.
While everyone’s joining gyms and signing up for classes they’ll never finish, there are a ton of people not getting the real guidance they need to make an actual impact at the start of the new year. These people want something more than a new fitness regime or productivity hack.
Online business buyers and sellers hoping to make 2021 their year of acquisitions or profitable exits are quietly waiting on the sideline, wondering if any of the new year’s guidance could help them make their move.
A new year is actually the perfect time to get a game plan together for buyers and sellers, as the right moves now can lead to a life-changing exit or deal by the year’s end.
For all the hopeful buyers and sellers out there, we don’t want you to miss your chance to set yourself up right for the year.
Here’s the goal roadmap you can set up and chip away at to really make this year your best one yet.
The Best New Year’s Resolutions for Buyers
Buyers can rarely rely on happenstance when acquiring a business. It takes the right planning early on to make the deal happen. Here are some concrete steps buyers should take if they plan to acquire this year.
Create a Buying Plan of Action
The idea of creating a game plan for the year isn’t original: Most New Year’s resolutions include some kind of goal setting. But in this case, goal setting and a plan of action should be created entirely through a buying lens.
What this might mean is mapping out your buying criteria. Are you looking for a certain kind of monetization at a certain price point? Would you like the business to need less than 5 hours per week of maintenance? Are you hoping to flip the business for a profit in less than two years?
All of these questions create guideposts to orient yourself to what you’re looking for as a buyer. From there you can create a master plan of action, going as far as planning when to buy and from where.
The more details you have locked in, the more likely you’ll come across your ideal acquisition more naturally — a winning scenario for the new year.
Solidify Enough Liquidity to Buy
This is critical to keep in mind early in the year, as managing and amassing funds takes time.
If you’re going to buy this year, resolve to have your financial house in order. This includes having enough liquid assets at your disposal. If you have your net worth tied up in other investments or retirement accounts, you won’t have them on hand if you need to act fast on an acquisition.
If you have other capital coming through that you are using to fund your acquisition, like selling a house or stocks, you’ll obviously need to take this into account and map out your year from a financial perspective. Knowing you’ll only have enough liquidity when your other sale is complete will inform your buying window.
In the meantime, you can look for available businesses and reaffirm what your buying criteria are so that when you are liquid, you’ll be able to move much faster on a potential acquisition.
Look for Blessings in Disguise
It was a former buyer from our marketplace who said that looking for blessings in disguise informed most of his buying strategy.
This particular buyer kept his eyes peeled for Amazon FBA businesses with inventory problems. To him, that was a clue that there was enough demand to keep the products running out, which was a good problem to have; with a few quick fixes to inventory management, he would be able to come in and meet the demand and grow the business quickly.
By looking at someone else’s problem as his own opportunity, he managed to grow his newly acquired business by 500–600%.
As a buyer wanting to make the most of any deal this year, prime yourself to look for these opportunities, consistently and patiently. Know that it may take some time, but if you start early, you’re more likely to find the right business hiding right under your nose.
Plan to Buy at the Right Time
It all comes down to what’s best for you. However, there is a right time to buy, depending on what niche you’d like to be in or the kind of business you’d like to acquire.
For example, say you’re looking for an affiliate or Amazon Associates business in niches like sporting goods, outdoor goods, or apparel. These can all be defined by their seasonality.
A sport-focused site may peak in the summer or fall months depending on the sport, so you would want to buy before its high season to make sure you’re comfortable owning the business and can run it smoothly by the time peak season comes.
Plus, you may want to own the site and reap the benefit of its highest-grossing months sooner rather than later.
That same notion informs ecommerce or FBA buyer hopefuls. Most online stores selling physical goods look forward to the height of sales during the end-of-the-year holidays. Some buyers may want to acquire right before the high season while they have enough capital to replenish inventory. Others may want plenty of time to prepare for the high season and acquire well in advance of the holiday season to get the hang of inventory management so they are best prepared for holiday sales.
You can’t know when to buy if you don’t prepare early.
By honing in on the kind of business you’d like to acquire and making sure you’re fully ready to buy when the business comes along, you set yourself up to buy at the absolute best time for you and your new business.
The Best New Year’s Resolutions for Sellers
Preparing for a sale doesn’t mean simply throwing up a virtual “for sale” sign in front of your business. Without thought and intention around the sale, you’re more likely to end up selling your business for much less money than it’s worth. That’s why the right New Year’s goals are so important for sellers. Let’s explore some of the top goals sellers should have to kick off the new year.
Plan Your Exit Early
As mentioned, putting your business up for sale haphazardly could spell disaster.
When starting an online business, you should think of your exit as soon as possible, sometimes even before the business really begins. This allows you to set up your online enterprise as an optimized asset from day one, and you avoid having to reshape the business later to make it more sellable.
If you haven’t started thinking about your exit yet, the new year is a great time to start preparing.
Planning your exit is something you don’t have to do alone. Some brokers offer free exit-planning calls so you don’t miss any crucial steps. You could set up an exit call here.
If you are exit planning on your own, you should include some of the goals discussed next.
Optimize Your Business for Its Highest Valuation
Exit planning goes hand in hand with optimizing your business.
When looking forward to an exit, you have to put yourself in the buyer’s shoes. What would they see if they looked at your business as a potential acquisition? Would they find immediate things they would change? Would they be deterred by your operational structure? Could they see a crystal clear roadmap if they acquired your business, and therefore be willing to pay a premium for it?
To have the right answers to those questions, you’ll have to nitpick your own business. If you’ve done all the work on your own — whether creating all your own content or fulfilling all the orders — could you go ahead and outsource those tasks? If your business is only monetized by one income stream, could you add another revenue stream easily to diversify and strengthen your business?
Write out everything you could be doing better, as changes will directly correlate to your valuation. The more you improve, the more income you bring in, and by the time you do go to sell, you could be looking at a much higher valuation from the incremental shifts you’ve made.
Set a Deadline to Sell
This step is important for those who have said to themselves over the years that THIS will be the year they finally sell.
We all do it. It’s easy to get cold feet over such an important decision. But by doing this, you only delay the gratification of selling.
Make this year your year to sell.
Set up a deadline (and review the buyer’s section on planning to buy at the right time to inform when might be the best time to sell).
This year, we are seeing businesses sell for record multiples, so it’s as good a time as ever to cash in on your hard work.
Plan for a Windfall
A problem many sellers have is that they have no clue what to do with the capital from their business.
If you anticipate walking away with a large sum of money for your business, have a plan for how to invest it. Will you be buying a piece of property? Buying another business? Investing the cash into other assets? Make sure you have the capacity to handle a windfall and use it wisely.
On that same note, you’ll want to check in with your accountant and tax specialist to understand the tax implications of your business sale. Get a handle on this early so you can best prepare and not lose money due to surprises down the road.
Make the Most Money Possible This Year
The new year always brings an influx of articles enticing you to envision the best you and best year. Some come with good intentions, while others are out to sell you the false promise that making this your best year ever will come with ease.
It takes work, but it’s possible. If you’ve looked around at other entrepreneurs making large sums and been envious of their success, maybe this is the year to ask yourself:
“Why not me too?”
You can make life-changing sums of money through selling your business or getting into the game as a business buyer.
All it takes is the right forward-thinking and the intention to do the work.
You got this.
