Elizabeth Shea (00:43)
Hello everybody and welcome to Branching Out. I am so excited to have my dear friend Sharon Heaton in the studio today. How are you today, Sharon?
Sharon Heaton (00:51)
Terrific and delighted to be with you, Elizabeth.
Elizabeth Shea (00:54)
I'm so excited to hear your story. Sharon comes to us as the founder and CEO of a company called sbLiftOff, which is an M&A advisory firm. She's an investment banker and also an author. She's authored this wonderful book called Lift Off, which we will talk about a little bit later today in the program. So welcome Sharon, and we're really excited to hear your story.
Sharon Heaton (01:14)
Thank you so much for inviting me.
Elizabeth Shea (01:16)
Okay, so I was actually recently on Sharon's podcast. So, we're kind of doing an about-face here, which I think is exciting. But the questions are going to be different because you're looking at the clients from a different perspective. So, let's start from the beginning. Tell us a little bit about your background and how you got into this business. You've been doing it for some time now. Tell us about that story.
Sharon Heaton (01:35)
Well, thank you very much for asking. I'm going to start with a confession. I am a recovering attorney. I'm in a 12-step program. I'm at step six, which is apologies and all the rest of that. But I started my career doing M&A at a global law firm, very large deals, publicly traded. And then I started working with PE firms and, again, hundreds of millions of dollars.
I had an investment bank that I sold, and after I sold that, I was trying to decide what I wanted to do next. I was thinking about all sorts of options and a friend came to me and said, “Sharon, I've had my company for 20 years. I really want to sell it. I've not been able to sell it. Can you help me?” And I said, “I'm not doing anything else right now, so let me give it a shot.” And I found out that I loved it.
It was the first time I worked with the founder owner. I'd always been working in publicly traded companies or PE-backed, and so the numbers were much bigger. But the involvement in the economy, the involvement in how that founder thinks about their company is so different. So, I did that transaction and then said, “I don't know how I'm going to do it, but I'm going to work with owners like these.” And it was that that led to the formation of sbLiftOff.
Elizabeth Shea (02:54)
Well, that's terrific. And how long ago was that? How long have you had your company?
Sharon Heaton (02:57)
I started the company legally in 2016. We really got started in 2018.
Elizabeth Shea (03:02)
Wow, you’ve made some great progress and some great strides in this ecosystem. We're so excited to have you on the show. Tell us a little bit about your client base and the kind of companies you work for. What's a typical profile of someone that might want to come to you?
Sharon Heaton (03:16)
We have deep expertise in the GovCon sector. So, while we work outside GovCon, I think our best and highest use is in GovCon. There are a lot of M&A advisors that say that they are generalists. And they are. They can go from a product company to a services company to whatever it is. And the reality is, GovCon is different. You really need to have a very different set of knowledge in order to do deals successfully in that market.
We have worked outside GovCon as well. Our clients typically are folks that are not Main Street companies. They have more than five or six million in revenue, but they're not huge companies. And to me, “huge” is 100 million, 200 million . . . wonderful companies. But the truth is, there's a lot of investment banks and M&A advisors who want to work on those deals, and they're providing very good service.
We have seen that there's a bit of a lack in the market of high-quality M&A advisory services for companies between 10 million and let's say 100 million in revenue. And that's our sweet spot. We work with the folks who started their company at their kitchen table, came up with an idea, built it into a company that makes some money, hires other people, pays their taxes. It is the ability of taking an idea and turning it into a company. It's like gold into straw. And that is the environment in which we work, and we love working in that community.
Elizabeth Shea (04:46)
So that's sort of your sweet spot. And that's a good point. There's a really strong need for that type of an advisory service for that niche. Can you talk a little bit about what those companies should be thinking about before they meet with you? Or why should they meet with you? What are the triggers that make them think, “hmm, I might need to talk to Sharon and her company?”
Sharon Heaton (05:08)
Sometimes you'll hear from people, “start with the end in mind. When you start your company, know what it is you want to do to exit your company.” Personally, I think that's nonsense. I think that when you start your company, except in very rare circumstances, the owner is still just figuring it out. What is my company going to be? How am I going to provide these services or products? What works and what doesn't work? And I see a lot of pivoting that goes on in the first two, three, four, five years of a company.
At some point, whether it's year two or year five, the owner has figured out, this is what my company does. And once you've done that and you've got some level of sustainability, you're not worried about making payroll, you've gone through those really difficult, early years. At that point, you should start thinking about, “what do I want here? Do I want to build this company and be taken out feet first and I don't really care what happens to the company? Or I want to build a company, and I want to sell it. Or I want to build a company and give it to my grandkids or my kids.” All of those are perfectly legitimate. There are many options of what you can do. But that's the time to start thinking about it as well as to start having other people look at your company to determine: what will the market think of your company? What are the strengths and challenges? Every company has strengths, but every company has challenges as well. And business owners who know what the challenges are do better than those that basically say, “I'm not paying attention to that.”
Elizabeth Shea (06:47)
Right, right. So that they have a sense for what might need to be fixed and can potentially work on those things interim. So, you mentioned at the beginning that government contractors are different and unique. Can you talk a little bit more about that? What makes them unique and different?
Sharon Heaton (07:01)
The regulatory environment in which GovCon works is so different than in pretty much any other industry. There are other industries like healthcare that have some very specific laws to that. Clearly GovCon is one of those. If you're doing, let's say, IT in the commercial sector, that's great. But if you're going to do that same IT in the GovCon sector, you need to be very different in how you're structured and what the certifications are and all the rest of that. So, GovCon is its own environment and having people who understand . . . If you're working with an M&A advisor who says, “what's an IDIQ? Tell me about this BPA that you have. My God, you got the SHIELD IDIQ? Well, that's for billions of dollars. Your company is now worth a huge amount!” Not true. You need to understand the difference between a hunting license and actually work that your company has. And that's really, very important.
I want to go to one thing that you said, which is “what do you need to do to make the company more valuable?” The number one thing that we see in many of these companies is the importance of the owner. That the owner is so used to doing everything themselves. They started the company at their kitchen table. They did everything. They were a one-armed paper hanger. They were taking care of everything. As the company grows, it's incredibly important for that to change. Because if the company is too dependent upon the owner, then the likelihood of a third party being interested in your company is pretty small. Or they'll be interested at a much lower price. Or they'll be interested at a lower price if you stay there for a long time. Well, maybe you're looking to sell because you want to do something else.
The importance of the owner . . . we basically turn to people and say, “hey, listen, if God forbid, you walked out with a parking lot and got struck by lightning, what happens to your company the next day?” And for people who say, “my God, those people have work to do.” For the people who say, “well, I've been able to take a vacation and my second in command would do this and we have a leadership proposal. . .” That is a very good story to have. I think so many business owners think that because they're important, they're doing well. In fact, the more important you are, the lower the value of your company.
Elizabeth Shea (09:29)
That's so true. It's not to be forgotten that sometimes that's just where the owner lives and resides and that brings them joy and value. And so, if you have a situation where a CEO comes to you like that, how do you advise them or what kind of counsel can you give them to help reduce that owner dependency?
Sharon Heaton (09:47)
I first start off with what is it they want. If in fact they love what they're doing, they want to continue to do it, and they recognize there's going to be an impact on the value of the company or limit their options going forward, it's their company. They get to make those decisions, and my role is to simply help them. If however, they say — as most of them do — “I am tired. I’m doing the business development, I’m doing the operations, I'm doing the back office, and I just can't keep it up anymore.” It's like, well, if we can lessen that burden on you, would you like to stay with your company and work on one of those things, or would you like to leave? So, the real question is not so much what am I advising them, as much as I'm trying to find out from them what their goal is and then helping them achieve that particular goal.
Elizabeth Shea (10:40)
Right, especially because post-transaction, their life will be very different, right?
Sharon Heaton (10:45)
It very often is, even people who sell their company and stay with the company, it's very different. If you've been the owner and you've been making all the decisions and now you sell and you're still there and now you have to go, mother, may I, can I do this or that? I think that actually you went through a situation like that, didn't you, Elizabeth? And how did that feel for you?
Elizabeth Shea (11:04)
Yes, I did. Yes, I did. I sold my company.
It was hard. Mother, may I have raise for my employees or mother, may I take this client to dinner? No, was very, it was, you're exactly right.
Sharon Heaton (11:16)
I sometimes joke, and I'm only partially joking, that business owners who sold sometimes make terrible employees. And on the other hand, the business owners who are basically a subject matter expert, and that's what they love, and they've never been interested in the business development, they've never been interested in the back office, they might be very happy. They might become a chief technology officer at the new company and be thrilled that all the other responsibilities have been taken from them.
So it really does depend and we start off by saying, you are the business owner. You're the one who has your hands on the steering wheel. What are your goals? Let's figure out how to achieve your goals from where you are right now.
Elizabeth Shea (11:59)
I like that you start there and do that soul searching because that is so important. And sometimes business owners don't think about that particular side of it or don't really necessarily do the reflection that's required. when is a good time for a company to come to you? is it when they originally start thinking about an exit or a transition of some sort? And we know what's a good timeframe for them to reach out to you.
Sharon Heaton (12:24)
Earlier is better than later. You know, again, I don't believe in the start with the end in mind. Figure out your company, figure out what's going on. We're happy to provide advice as you're kind of getting to that point. But once you've gotten to the point and saying, okay, I want to do a generational transfer, I want to do a third party, I want to do an ESOP, I want to stay for another 15 years, all of those are perfectly legitimate decisions.
We think that's the time to talk to an &A advisor, particularly somebody like us, because we're not there to push you. We strongly believe in creating relationships and not simply doing transactions. We closed a deal in December of 2025, and we started talking to those people in 2018. And at various times, they came in 2021 and 2022, they came and said, we want to sell now. And I said, listen, I'm an &A advisor. I love doing deals.
I will absolutely bring you to market. If I were your sister, I would tell you this is not your time. That here are the three or four things that I think that we should do first to get the kind of result that you want. But if you want to go now, I'll take you now. They held back. We got started in 24, 25. We closed that deal. It was a very satisfying transaction for them. They basically are just fine at this point. So sometimes we have to give people information that they don't want.
“Now is not the right time. Go win some recompete. You have too much customer concentration. Your financials are not clean,” et cetera. And in order to be able to make those judgments, we have a very limited data request that we make of business owners. We go under NDA and we say, we're not going to do the entire thing that we would do if we're bringing it to market. But at a high level, what are we seeing? And the advantage of that is that it might often be the first time that some third party is really looking at the company.
There's something called “group think",” and when all of the CEO and the CFO and they're all thinking the same way, sometimes it's helpful to have somebody coming from the outside to say, know, all of that's perfectly legitimate but this is how the market would perceive your company. This is how a buyer would look at it and people have been saying, “I never thought about it from that perspective.”
It's like you don't need to do that, but you need to know that if in fact you want to sell, these are the things that people will be looking for. And the book is really designed to help people with that. It's called the 12 things you need to know before you sell your company. And it is basically the questions that I get from business owners on a regular basis. And I sat down and I said, why don't I just write down answers to these questions? And that's what the book is.
So it's not a textbook, it's not, God forbid, a legal textbook, but it's a very accessible book for smart business owners who may not know a lot about &A, just to kind of get them thinking about why do these various things matter.
Elizabeth Shea (15:33)
You know, I've noticed that very active on the speaking circuit. you are an author, you published a book. Now you talk about educating your clients and serving more as a coach. So seems like that might be a differentiator for you as a firm in working with clients because so many times there are companies that think that an &A advisor is
just about the transaction. So I appreciate that perspective I think it's really important because it's the most important decision that probably a business owner will make,
Sharon Heaton (16:02)
usually the biggest financial transaction that a business owner is going to have in their lifetime and it's being done in a situation that they don't have any idea of what's going on. So our feeling is if we can keep them informed and tell them in advance what's going to happen and what to expect and to build the relationship. If somebody came to me and said on Thursday I want to go to market and sign an agreement with us on Tuesday, would we do it?
Of course we do it. But we're far more likely to turn to people on Thursday and say, it's a wonderful company. Let's take a look at this. What are the things that we need to do? This is a great time to go to market. Maybe you need to wait a little bit for these reasons. So we want that relationship. We are committed to the mission of serving business owners in an incredibly fair and transparent way. And we think that that education element is simply a paying it forward.
Hopefully,
people that we educate will say, they seem like good people. I'll work with them. But if they
Elizabeth Shea (17:05)
Okay.
Sharon Heaton (17:05)
don't, that's OK. That's our paying it forward into the world.
Elizabeth Shea (17:10)
No, I love that. That's a great philosophy. Let's shift gears a little bit and talk about just the government contracting industry in general, because it's changed over the years. And it seems like every couple of years, there's some attack against GovCons or it's either feast or famine. Can you talk about what the marketplace looks like today? Is it a good time to be a government contractor? Is it time to pivot away from that kind of business? What are you seeing out there in the market?
Sharon Heaton (17:36)
Excellent question. I am being approached by more buyers in the GovCon market than sellers right now. The number of people who want to get into GovCon or expand the company that they already have in GovCon and buy others is higher than I've ever seen at any other time.
Elizabeth Shea (17:53)
Wow.
Sharon Heaton (17:54)
Having said that, some of these buyers are grossly unrealistic about what it is they're going to find.
they want to find a company with 12 million in revenue that's 100 % full and open and that's 100 % prime contracts. Well, that's wonderful, but that's probably not going to happen. So buyers need to understand you pay for what you get. So,
Elizabeth Shea (18:15)
Mm-hmm.
Sharon Heaton (18:17)
but the buy side is very, very strong right now. The sell side is a little bit more problematic. If you've got an A level company, we're absolutely able to sell that. There's an incredible amount of interest.
It used to be that if you had a B company or even a C company in 2021 when the market was so ridiculous, things were selling just because you had an operating agreement.
Elizabeth Shea (18:41)
well.
Sharon Heaton (18:42)
Now the company needs to be stronger and sellers really need to be thinking about what gives value to my company. what a seller needs to understand is that buyers will pay
for what it is you've already accomplished. But they're buying because of the future. And
Elizabeth Shea (19:01)
Right.
Sharon Heaton (19:01)
so you have a responsibility as a seller to at least point out what the future of this company can be. And in GovCon, that really comes down to a lot of backlog. A backlog and a pipeline that indicate that you're not a one-trick pony.
Elizabeth Shea (19:19)
Okay, sure. So from the perspective of buyers that are out there, what do they look like? Are they strategic acquirers? Are they private equity? Are they family offices? What's the typical type of buyer that you're seeing today?
Sharon Heaton (19:35)
Yes, is the answer to what you just said. Let me break that down a little bit more. The
Elizabeth Shea (19:38)
Yes, okay.
Sharon Heaton (19:42)
reality is there is no one &A market. There's lots of different markets. So I'm going to focus only on the GovCon market.
Elizabeth Shea (19:49)
Okay.
Sharon Heaton (19:49)
And there I divide into three categories. There are the large publicly traded companies, whether it's Leidos or SAIC, great
Elizabeth Shea (19:58)
Mm-hmm.
Sharon Heaton (19:59)
companies, publicly traded, billions of dollars. There's an &A market there.
Then there's a market of companies that are 100 million to about a billion, and those tend to be strategics backed by PE. It used to be that a seller would say, I want to sell to a strategic, not a PE. Well, in GovCon, those things have combined. PE is now very much part of companies that are over $100 million. And
Elizabeth Shea (20:25)
Okay.
Sharon Heaton (20:26)
then there's the under $100 million market where we play. And in that place,
If you're under 30 or 40 million, chances are you're going to have some set-aside work. And if you're going to have some set-aside work, then a whole different series of rules come in. One of the ways in which GovCon is different is that generally as a company gets bigger in the commercial market, the valuation processes increase the value of that company. For instance, you would look at what the net income is and multiply that by three, five, seven, whatever it might be.
Only in GovCon, as a company gets bigger, does the multiple used for the valuation go down if they're in the set-aside market.
Elizabeth Shea (21:11)
Interesting.
Sharon Heaton (21:12)
Because you've got that size-out issue. And that size-out issue is incredibly important. It's hard to get full and open work. You've got to prepare for it. You've got to set your company up for it. If you are saying that
I don't want to go into the full and open market. I just want to grow my company as much as I can and then give that to somebody else. Well, that means that you're transferring risk. And if there's one mantra that I'd love to have sellers understand, risk to the buyer is a lower price to the seller.
Elizabeth Shea (21:44)
huh.
Sharon Heaton (21:45)
So whoever takes on the risk of getting into the full and open market gets the value. If the owner basically says, I'm going to get 20 % of my work in the full and open market,
that company is going to be worth more than if they were 100 % in the set-aside market. So these
Elizabeth Shea (22:01)
Okay.
Sharon Heaton (22:02)
are the kinds of weirdnesses that happen in GovCon that aren't a part of other types of markets.
Elizabeth Shea (22:07)
I love the weirdnesses. Everyone just has some weirdnesses, but in GovCon
Sharon Heaton (22:11)
Absolutely.
Elizabeth Shea (22:12)
that's very important. So are there organizations or avenues for people to help educate themselves? What might you advise other than reading your book? Which I actually found to be fascinating because it was really a very well laid out step-by-step thought process to how you educate yourself. But what else might people do? Where might they go?
Sharon Heaton (22:33)
I've got to tell you that there are so many webinars and events that go on in the DC region, but the webinars are really national. And truth is, these things are national as well. I'm going to be speaking in Huntsville in September. So I think I'll be at Virginia Beach, whether it's September or October. So look for events. I think that you should be reaching out to, first of all, &A advisors.
And if they don't want to talk to you, they're the wrong &A advisor for you. They're
Elizabeth Shea (23:04)
Right.
Sharon Heaton (23:05)
interested in a transaction, not a relationship. I think you as an owner deserve a relationship. But other people who are worth reaching out to, accounting firms, law firms, they can tell you something about how you should structure and to see whether or not you can build a team that really makes sense for you. One of the things that I think is hard, particularly for people who founded their own companies, is that &A is a team sport.
It's not that the owner can do it by themselves or the owner can't even do it just with an &A advisor. There's going to be a lawyer, there's going to be an accountant, and figuring out how that team can be more than the sum of the parts is part of the role of the &A advisor to make sure that we're getting the best use out of all those players at the table.
Elizabeth Shea (23:50)
You know, I was gonna go down that path in a minute, because you made me think about the importance of the team and who might you advise that that business owner surrounds themselves with? and is it your family lawyer? Is it, you know, your tax accountant? Like, what are the types of qualities that you think that people should look for in their advisory team?
Sharon Heaton (24:10)
incredibly great question. I think you basically need a wealth advisor, you need an &A advisor, you need an accountant, and you need a lawyer. Now let me talk about all of those separately.
Elizabeth Shea (24:20)
Yes.
Sharon Heaton (24:21)
The wealth advisor, gosh knows there's a lot of wealth advisors around and some of them are truly wonderful. If you're a business owner, you need a wealth advisor who works with business owners. There's lots of unique issues associated with that.
and you want to talk to that person for years before you go to market. Now some wealth advisors will say, talk to me when you've had your liquidity event and can give me the money for me to manage. Those are the wrong ones. You want to be talking to the wealth
Elizabeth Shea (24:46)
Right. I agree. I totally agree with you.
Sharon Heaton (24:51)
advisor who's working with business owners and is helping them when they're trying to figure out their 401k or how should they set up a plan to reward employees or how much money...
Do they need for their retirement or should they create any trusts or estate planning, etc. You want a wealth advisor who's working with you even though they're not making a lot of money right now. And
Elizabeth Shea (25:14)
Okay.
Sharon Heaton (25:15)
if they're not, then that might not be the right one for you. So
Elizabeth Shea (25:18)
I love that point. I love that point. Yep.
Sharon Heaton (25:21)
that's on the wealth advisor. On the lawyer, I feel strongly about this one.
Elizabeth Shea (25:26)
Okay.
Sharon Heaton (25:27)
You need to find a lawyer that one, does &A and two,
knows GovCon. And
Elizabeth Shea (25:34)
Okay.
Sharon Heaton (25:35)
you cannot go to your family lawyer or the guy who just did your trust in the state or your nephew who just graduated from law school. You you wouldn't go to a cardiologist to say, I've got a skin thing here. You know, you want a dermatologist for that. And you certainly don't want to go to dermatologist if you've got a heart condition. Different types
Elizabeth Shea (25:55)
Right.
Sharon Heaton (25:56)
of lawyers do different types of work.
And so you really want somebody who is day in and day out in &A and who understands the GovCon market. The third is then the accounting firm. the accounting issues in &A, bizarrely enough, by the time you're going to market, they're not as great. There are things called equality of earnings that we could talk about, and the accounting
Elizabeth Shea (26:19)
Okay.
Sharon Heaton (26:19)
firms are deeply involved in that. And then again, in GovCon, it's different.
there's a tax issue that comes up. In most &A outside of GovCon, when a company is acquired, it's acquired as an asset deal and the liabilities can be left behind. For GovCon, you can't do that because you have to buy the entity in order to get the past performance, to get the ISO certifications, the CMMC, whatever else it might be. As a result, the buyer is buying a whole bunch of liabilities.
They then need more protection for that. And by the way, buying the stock is way better for the seller than it is for the buyer.
Elizabeth Shea (27:06)
Hmm.
Sharon Heaton (27:06)
Our tax code being what it is, there is a weird provision, series of provisions that say, did you do a stock deal? We're going to treat this like it's an asset deal for tax purposes. That's good for the buyer, bad for the seller.
but you need to have an &A advisor who's going to say to the buyer, we're all for tax efficiency, but you're not going to get your tax efficiency by taking out of the pocket of the seller. Let's figure out how we're going to do this. So the accounting firm is important in a variety of different contexts, and some of that is really GovCon specific.
Elizabeth Shea (27:42)
Wow.
That is, I did not know a lot of that information. That's very fascinating. So the, you know, lot of advisors sounds a little bit expensive. can you share, what somebody might want to expect? know you outlined some of it in your book. I thought it was just helpful to know that, that in effect, what I'm going to try to say is, or suggest to say is that it's worth its weight in gold because you don't make mistakes, but can you share some perspective as to, is there a percentage number? it a
There's a dollar picture someone should suggest so they don't get total sticker shock.
Sharon Heaton (28:12)
Sure. First of all, the wealth advisor generally works for the fee that they're going to get for managing your money. Some of them might charge you something for plans and all the rest of that. It depends upon who you go to. Those costs should not be substantial. The accounting and legal fees, particularly the legal fees, can be very substantial. And it depends upon who you use. There are some solo practitioners that came out of big firms or are extremely experienced
but they don't have a name brand. And then there's
Elizabeth Shea (28:41)
Mm-hmm.
Sharon Heaton (28:42)
others that definitely have a name brand and do a wonderful job, but you need to figure out what's good for you and what's the level of risk in your company. those can range, I it could be hundreds of thousands of dollars of difference. I did a deal once basically we had a 30 some odd million dollar deal and my client's legal bill I thought was pretty expensive. It was about $350,000.
this was couple years ago and I was like why is that and it turned out that the buyer and I knew this had hired two very large law firms that were used to doing very large deals so the amount of legal work that got involved was way more than what would otherwise be involved. The legal bill for the buyer who I did not represent was over two million dollars. I was like
Elizabeth Shea (29:33)
my gosh.
Sharon Heaton (29:35)
I was stunned. So to some extent, it depends upon what the other side is doing. If the other side is going to negotiate every little twist, it might go up. If it's an experienced person on the other side, you can often get to the chase a lot faster. When we're working with our clients, we'll turn the lawyers and say, I want a fair deal. I want a deal that if you're the seller, if you're the...
you're the buyer, you're going to do that document. I wanted to get a document from you that would be fair if you were the seller. Because if you give me something else, we're just going to negotiate a long time to get to that point. And that's going to be a lot of wasted time, effort, and money. So let's try and do a deal that's good for the buyer, good for the seller, and maybe the lawyers don't get quite as much work. So there's that. The lawyer and the accountant
pretty much get paid whether or not the deal goes forward. So their fees are not insubstantial, but they're not contingent. The &A advisor, the vast predominance of our fee is contingent upon a successful closing of a deal. So we're definitely
Elizabeth Shea (30:46)
Mm-hmm.
Sharon Heaton (30:47)
taking a owner type risk with the company. And so our fee tends to be a percentage of the transaction, similar to real estate.
Elizabeth Shea (30:57)
Right, right. been surprised at how many people that I have come across who have not worked with an investment banker. And I've always thought that was a mistake. and maybe the reaction is, well, it's expensive. But if you're going to sell your house, you probably wouldn't list it by owner. You probably would hire a real estate agent. So why is this any different? Right. Can you talk about how you justify that for them?
Sharon Heaton (31:21)
absolutely.
know, 91 % of people who are selling their home use a realtor. And the process for selling your house is so much easier than the process for selling your company. You know, there's a form that basically the realtor uses. They make five changes. They're done. I'm not saying that what realtors do isn't important. is very important. But
people kind of know when I'm selling my house I go get a realtor. That's how I'm going to market it better, that's how I'm going to get the best price. Business owners are an ornery lot. I think that service providers have often had their hands out to business owners for decades saying, help us, help you. We want you to grow faster, we want you to have better margins, we want you to have better branding, whatever it is. And so business owners work through their
their company just swatting business advisors away. So there's kind of, I think, an initial reaction of saying, who are these people? There's also
Elizabeth Shea (32:21)
Right.
Sharon Heaton (32:21)
a sense that the business owner built this company. If they built it, then they should be able to sell it for crying out loud. But it's actually pretty darn hard. So some business owners will not go forward with an &A advisor because of cost.
and usually regret it. We basically have gone through all the deals that we've done and realized that we have either saved money or earned money for our client far in excess of what the fee was to pay to us. And while the fee could sound pretty substantial, you you make a small change on how a seller financing note is structured and it can make all the difference in the world. So just like if your tooth hurt,
You don't want to tie a string around it and close the door and have
your teeth tooth pulled, you go to a dentist. That's what should happen
Elizabeth Shea (33:12)
Alright.
Sharon Heaton (33:15)
with &A, but it's still not the majority of business owners who do it. In the smaller deals, in the under 100 million. In the over 100 million,
Elizabeth Shea (33:23)
Mm-hmm.
Sharon Heaton (33:25)
100 % have them. So what does that tell you?
Elizabeth Shea (33:27)
Right.
Right, right. You want to make sure you're making the right decision with the right advisors, because it's a lot of money at stake potentially. this has been a fascinating conversation, Sharon. I love it. Are there any last pieces of advice that you can give to our listeners today?
Sharon Heaton (33:44)
Find somebody that you like and you trust because one of the things that we as &A advisors need to do is sometimes tell you things you don't want to hear like now is not the time, like you know here are some other ways of doing things. The sooner that you start once you understand what your company is and where you're going, the more likely you're going to be able to increase the value of your company before you go to market and then of course increase the value even further.
when you're on the market.
Elizabeth Shea (34:14)
Well, I appreciate the transparency, the counsel, the coaching.
How can people get a hold of you? What's the best way?
Sharon Heaton (34:20)
The
best way to reach me is through the website, sbliftoff.com or you can reach out to me at Sharon.Heaton at sbliftoff.com and we'd be delighted to speak with you.
Elizabeth Shea (34:33)
That's
terrific. And thank you so much for joining us today.
Sharon Heaton (34:35)
Thank you so
much. Bye bye.