Harvest: The Definitive Guide to Selling Your Company

THE BEST TIME TO SELL YOUR COMPANY IS BEFORE YOU NEED TO

In the next ten to twenty years, most business owners will either hand their companies over to their children, shut their businesses down, or sell them. Smart business owners will plan for this years before they retire. Those who do not may find themselves settling for far too little, and this lack of planning may leave them unable to survive financially after their business is gone.

In HARVEST, deal experts Christopher J. Younger and David C. Tolson have created the ultimate step-by-step guide that will help you understand how to attain the maximum value for your business and create the perfect exit strategy.

In this book, you will learn how to:

-Evaluate your financial needs
-Plan your exit objectives
-Value your business
-Hire the right advisory team
-Understand financial statements and legal agreements
-Find a pool of potential buyers
-Enhance the value of your business through proper positioning, timing, and operational improvement
-Negotiate the transaction
-Close the deal

The authors' goal with this book is to convince you that the time you spend today thinking about the ultimate sale or transition of your business will yield some of the greatest rewards you will ever experience related to your business, both financially and personally.

David Tolson is a founder and Managing Director for CapitalValue Advisors, an investment bank in Englewood, Colorado, and the Chief Executive Officer for CapitalValue, LLC, a business valuation firm which he also founded. David has completed hundreds of business valuations in almost every industry segment, and is an accredited valuation expert, being awarded the AIBA (Accredited by the Institute of Business Appraisers) designation. Previously, David worked in Colorado's high-tech community as the lead business development officer for NeoCore, iWitness, and IQ3G, and created and led J.D. Edwards' first successful strategic business unit. David is a graduate of Colorado State University and earned an MBA (emphasis in finance) from the University of Colorado, where he was awarded the Beta Gamma Sigma designation for outstanding scholastic achievement.

Chris Younger is also a founder and Managing Director for Capi-talValue Advisors, and is the Chairman and Chief Executive Officer for The Silvercloud Companies, a private equity firm in Englewood, Colorado, with investments in telecommunications, construction, and software distribution. Previously, Chris was the President and Chief Operating Officer for Expanets, which at the time was the nation's largest value added distributor of voice and data networking solutions with over $1 billion in sales. Chris helped found Expanets and was responsible for its acquisition strategy, which involved acquiring 27 companies over the course of two years. Chris is a self-described "recovering" attorney, having clerked for the Honorable Jesse E. Eschbach of the United States Court of Appeals, Seventh Circuit, and having practiced corporate law in California for Wilson, Sonsini, Goodrich, and Rosati. Chris graduated from Harvard Law School, where he was the Managing Editor of the Harvard Law Review, and from Miami University in Oxford, Ohio, and attended the London School of Economics where he studied jurisprudence.