Business decision - to sell or not?

[bw81]

I live in a booming retirement area in FL. I purchased a full service site (including real estate) 9 years ago. The site also has a Oil & Lube operation. When I purchased the wash, I washed 34K cars per year. After 9 years of dedication, last year I washed over 65K cars (fyi: not open Sundays). My numbers reflect a very profitable business. I'm highly considering selling out and moving on to another project but I don't really have much experience when it comes to this type of thing. Just wondering what you experienced business owners would do?
Any comments would be greatly appreciated. Thank You

 

[Eric H]

Before anyone here could give you any advise on selling or not I think any financial advisor would ask "what are your goals?"

Are you near retirement age (whatever that is)? do you need all of the cash out of the carwash sale to fund your next endeavor?

Is there a trusted manager in place that you could offer a partnership? You can retain partial ownership while still maintaining an income from the business.

 

[Waxman]

or you could do a triple net lease and maintain ownership.

selling outright would be nice, too, if profit potential were high enough.

 

[robert roman]

If you care about the customers and employees and want to obtain expected price, I would consider selling to a 3rd party that appreciates and understands effort and hard work it took to build the business up, develop people and establish a good reputation in the community.

For example, I have a client in Lakeland, Florida that recently retired after 30 plus years washing cars at the same location. He sold his full-service wash to Mister Car Wash chain.

He was very happy with the price. The reason for this is Mister Car Wash places value on intangible assets such as quality of customer base, well trained staff, and growth trajectory.

My client was also happy knowing his team/family of employees would be working for nation’s largest carwash chain that retains most employees and offers advancement opportunities.

Just as there is process to get into carwash business, there is process for getting out.

So, you should consider engaging professionals to help you with the preliminaries before making the decision to sell.

 

[mac]

Couple of things. The best time to sell a business is when it's going strong. If you have some key employees, offer them a golden handcuff. That means that if they stay with the new owner for say a year, they get a nice bonus.

 

[CarBuff's]

Robert, do you get involved in carwash business exit strategies? Does anyone have experience working with a broker that they would recommend? Thank you!

 

[robert roman]

Robert, do you get involved in carwash business exit strategies? Does anyone have experience working with a broker that they would recommend? Thank you!

Yes I do. For example, I was involved in exit strategy for the Lakeland, Florida carwash.