How to Sell Your Small Business: A Conversation with Baton Co-founder, Dylan

Speaker 1: 0:10

Welcome to the Funded Podcast, where we dive into the details of how businesses really start, grow and operate. We'll hear from experts that can guide us to make smart business decisions in finance, marketing, managing people and everything in between. I'm your host, stephanie, the CEO of Funded, where we're on a mission to redefine how the smallest businesses access and understand capital. Today I'm chatting with Dylan, the co-founder of Baton, and we are going to talk about selling a business. So, dylan, welcome to the show. First question, biggest thing on my mind what kind of businesses sell their business versus not?

Speaker 2: 0:46

Totally. Thanks for having me, steph. It's been really exciting. So Baton is brokering a lot of small business deals, so I've gotten to see a lot of these up close now and there isn't one answer and the type of deals that we can put together for these folks has been really exciting. Because we're selling the tiny franchises that are making $30,000 a year to somebody who says, yeah, I want to quit my job or do this on the side and I can make some additional income to the really big companies that are pharmacies and we can sell to a private equity fund. So much depends on what industry you're in, but there's, I think, for all of these small businesses there's kind of a story where it makes sense and it's all about finding that buyer. That kind of aligns with whatever that business can offer to you as an owner.

Speaker 1: 1:27

Yeah, that's so interesting. I know there's so many types of businesses out there and there seems to be a sense and I'm wondering, if you see this, that, one a lot of businesses just don't ever think about their exit, they don't think about selling. And then, two, there's like an assumption that they're in some way unsellable. Do you see that?

Speaker 2: 1:48

Yeah, I mean we definitely wish that we could get in front of a business owner 10 years before they're ready to sell. But there are, of course, factors that make it more difficult to sell a business. I think the funniest thing and maybe we might understand this as investors, but as small business owners a lot of times they think that if they're working 80 hours a week in the business it's a good thing for the value. But usually and it might be counterintuitive but if you're working that hard in the business, it actually makes it more difficult to sell because you limit the buyer pool and you have to find a new owner who's willing to work as hard as you are in the business. So they're definitely there are a lot of them, but that's the biggest one that we'd love to talk to the owner about in the early days of them even considering to sell is that, hey, let's try to put some processes in place and let's try to hire people so you can get out of the business and also at the same time, hopefully improve your quality of life and get you more time to do other things and hobbies and have some fun. But I think the notion that a business is unsellable we don't like that, at least at the time, and I think what you see and maybe where that narrative comes from a little bit is a lot of business brokers and business owners will go and put a business in market but not really think about how to tell that story and not really think about, like, what are the assets that this business has that might be attractive to somebody else? And now of course there's some businesses that just like, don't have the assets and never really made it work. But I think by and large you can find those things that will be appealing to some buyer out there, whether it's that search fund, the private equity fund or just somebody who's ready to leave their job doing customer support at a big company like Apple or something.

Speaker 1: 3:26

Yeah, that's so interesting. I'm thinking about selling a business. One of the things I always thought that I now realize isn't true is that a lot of small businesses are service businesses. A lot of them don't have contracts right. Or if they do have a contract, if they sell, that customer has a right to leave and so they almost think they're like unsellable because they can't like handcuff their customers to the business. But I've actually gone through selling a service business and as long as that experience and transition is good for the customer, there's still a sellable business there. But I hear that a lot. And then the other thing I'm curious about that I don't know is are break even businesses sellable?

Speaker 2: 4:10

Yeah, both of those are great questions. On the first one, I think so much is in the art of making the deal and it's why it's helpful to have like an owner might not know these things, but you can structure these deals with incentive packages to be to say that, hey, this is how much I'm gonna buy the business for and this is the up front amount. And if these customers retain, if we can retain this amount of revenue, then you get paid out x amount of money over time and it's why there is nuance there and you might want that third party to come in and support. But I think so much of the secret sauce is and how do you structure that deal? And I know a lot of buyers joke is like you name the price and all name the terms. But if the right terms are there, then you know. Hopefully you can try to work something out where it's mutually beneficial to that buyer and to the seller. So that's one thing we definitely focus on that to kind of when we're working with owners you say like what's the bottom line of the deal that you'd be willing to accept and think about seller financing and think about bonus structures and kind of like what are the real assets that this business has?

Speaker 1: 5:09

Yeah. So before we get into just like the nuts and bolts of selling a business, I want to take a step back because you made a comment on if we could talk to these businesses 10 years earlier. So we have small business listeners here. They're somewhere in their journey, but I would love to just hear what are some of the things that a business owner should think about if they do want to sell their business. I love the one you said on don't work in the business so much, which I get like if I'm looking at buying a business and the owners like, oh, I work 80 hours a week versus some owner, that's like well, I mostly am on vacation and I check in once a month. I know a business I want to buy. So what are some other things that an existing business owner should think about?

Speaker 2: 5:51

Yeah, well, I think what you just said is a really good point, like by generally, I think, one you could talk to professionals about this, learn what your valuation is. All those things are really important and get people you trust around you to really understand, like, what's valuable here. And then I really encourage owners to think about the business in terms of a buyer and what is the buyer actually paying for? And I think to your point, contracts is a great one and if there's real contracted revenue, that's going to happen over and over again and annually, and you have these customers that are super loyal to you. Of course that's going to make the business more sellable. Customer concentration is something that we see to. Sometimes 50% of somebody's revenue is coming from One customer and that, of course, makes it more challenging to sell because, like you said before, there's risk that that bigger customer turns. It's like all the other things that make a business better. Right, it is easier to end. This is an unfortunate truth of where we're at right now and I think this will change over time with technology. But it's an unfortunate truth that the bigger the business is, the more sellable it is, and the more cash flow there is in the business, the more sellable it is. So there's just general things to do to grow the business. And then, the most important, have good books, get an account who's really good and a bookkeeper who's really good, and make sure you understand everything. And if you can do that, you're going to be so far ahead of other folks and that selling process is going to be so much less painful that we could talk about this all day. But the final thing I'll say is you can only cheat once. So if you're doing illegal things in the business and you're operating in a gray zone, it's funny, but it happens all the time, stuff.

Speaker 1: 7:30

An unintentional to totally unintentional.

Speaker 2: 7:33

It's just how these things have been run and I have so much sympathy for that. I can understand it. But if you are not reporting certain amount of tips and your taxes, you're not paying sales tax and things like that. It is going to make the business, if not impossible, extremely difficult to sell to somebody and you're going to get beat up on price because they're just not buying that same business that you were selling or you were running.

Speaker 1: 7:56

Yeah, two things that you just brought up to me that are interesting is one the books and finances. I feel like I've been like beating a dead horse on this, which is a horrible phrase, by the way. I always think business owners need to learn finance and do their books themselves for a while to understand them, but then always be in the books like don't just rely on an accountant to be like you're good. It's like you should be able to read your financials and understand them. But what that made me think of is a comment I'd heard before from small business owners is they don't think their business is soluble because they've been taking so much money out of the business to live off of overtime and they're like some. My financials look awful and I feel like something that a lot of small business owners don't realize is actually when you go and kind of do valuations or if you're using a broker or whatever, you actually get that back in Because it's like that next business owner, that's an opportunity. So if you can document like I've been pulling like two hundred fifty thousand dollars a year and distributions and that's why it looks like I only make $500,000 a year, that's actually okay. You're still a sellable business. It didn't mess up your book so that you couldn't sell.

Speaker 2: 9:10

Totally, and that's still a point kind of that we talked about at the beginning of the podcast. It's like I don't think there's a thing as an unsellable business. You're like go try it out and don't count yourself out before you start. Because to your point and I think the key distinction there stuff is it has to be well documented and it doesn't maybe it has to be as a strong word. And I think brokering businesses and selling businesses is definitely an art. There are scientific aspects to it, but it's definitely an art. So there aren't hard and fast rules that you have to do this and you need to do this if you want to sell. But it is going to make it much harder to sell if that isn't clearly documented. So you want to have, if you're paying yourself, 150k out of the business so it looks like the business isn't making any money, you want to make sure that that is documented in the payroll. If you're putting your kid's cell phone bill on the company card and you want to add that back which happens all the time just having clear documentation that we don't need 20 cell phone plans in the business, we only need 15.

Speaker 1: 10:05

Yeah, I love because I'm a business owner and these are the things.

Speaker 2: 10:08

Yeah, totally. The one thing that I wanted to comment on and I think it's interesting is this idea that a business owner has to do the books themselves, and we talk about this a lot. It's like if you have been running maybe you're the first generation or second generation and you're running a successful landscaping business and you are the chief landscaper, you're an expert, expert landscaper. I would like to push back against the notion that that person has to be an expert in finances. I think in an ideal world for sure, but I think if you can find trusted advisors who really understand these things, then you're just as good of a spot, if not better, because if you're a CPA, you're going to do a better job than that landscaping business owner 10 out of 10 times.

Speaker 1: 10:50

Yeah, and my comment is more around understanding your books when they get sent to you and not just trusting like you're good, you're not good, but I get my financials every month. I don't do my books anymore, of course, and because I've taken the time to understand finances, I ask good questions or I catch things that are misclassified because I'm like no, that couldn't be. But yeah, totally, you don't have to become a finance person. The other thing, too, that you made me think of was, say, you're operating in a great area not a legal, but a great area and you run a lot through your business. It's almost like if you have a small enough business, you should almost consider that as if this is the exit you want over being able to sell, because there is technically an opportunity for some people to potentially make more over time operating in a great area than selling, maybe.

Speaker 2: 11:48

Yeah, well, it's probably the ideal thing, and we could talk about valuations too. I would love to, but most businesses sell for two and a half to three times seller earnings. By and large, that's just what happens. I mean, it's kind of one to five and they're extraneous cases on both ends, but usually it's two and a half to three times.

Speaker 1: 12:04

So it's on revenue. You're saying, that's what you mean.

Speaker 2: 12:07

I mean depends on the industry, but by and large off of cash flow, especially for the main street businesses, service businesses et cetera.

Speaker 1: 12:14

Cool. Yeah, that's good to know because you always hear like EBITOD and I think people get overwhelmed by like what does that even mean and how do you arrive there? So that's good, cool. That actually is a great transition because that's where we're going is. So small business owner we kind of talked about some background leading up to this is ready to sell their business, or they're at least ready to get out of running their business and hopefully they're considering selling as an option. I think the overwhelming thing is how do you decide how much your business is worth? Where do you go with valuation? So what are those first steps these business owners should be thinking about in getting ready to sell?

Speaker 2: 12:52

Yeah, it's so important to have good professionals around you who do this for a living, and it's kind of to that point about the bookkeeper. If you've been operating a landscaping business or running a candy shop or you've been a barber for your entire life, you probably don't know what a PE multiple is and you likely don't know how to value your business, and that's okay. It would be kind of weird if you did so. The first step and like this changes for different people. I think the first step is just like go out and get a valuation and have someone value your business, because you'll learn about the process through those conversations and they'll kind of help you understand. It's like going to a doctor, just like what are your options and what's the general state of your health and what do you need to be prescribed? And do you need to be prescribed three years of running the business a little more clean? So it's in the book so you can make sure you're selling a cleaner business, or is your valuation generally in a range that you'd be willing to sell the business at and for that there are a lot of time gifts for evaluations. But there are also a lot of different places you can get valuations. They're online calculators. I don't think they're great, but they do exist. And then there's some amazing firms that we've actually partnered with that do certified valuations. You pay $1,000 to $2,000.

Speaker 1: 14:02

Oh, that's something I thought that was. My question is like this sounds expensive, but $1,000.

Speaker 2: 14:08

I mean, I've heard people pay for a million dollar businesses. They pay $100,000 for evaluation, which is nuts. If you're listening to this, don't pay more than $2,000 for evaluation, maybe $2,500.

Speaker 1: 14:21

But you said, your site does this Like. Is that a starting point then? Is your guys a site?

Speaker 2: 14:26

Yeah, so Bataan does it for free, and then also a lot of other business brokers will do it for free. You know, for us it's super mission aligned because we want to make sure that we're empowering owners with the data they need to be successful. And for business brokers and for Bataan too, it's a good foot in the door and it's a way to say like, hey, we're going to provide you with this thing that's worth $2,000 for free. You'll learn We'll kind of learn what it's like to work with each other, which is really important. We're about to go through this product, what could be a six-month journey of selling your business, and it's really stressful and hard. So let's make sure that we actually enjoy working together and we could see this being a longer-term relationship so important. If you do it with Bataan or any other business broker, and I'll try to speak in generalities and then they'll give you that valuation and then a good broker will help you kind of walk through. Ok, this is your valuation. This is the reason why it is where it is. Here are some things that we might want to clarify, because if the thing that you said isn't true or whatever it is, or you think the business is going to grow a bunch, or the last year of not being profitable was it anomaly, et cetera, et cetera then that valuation could change. So they'll walk you through that and then they'll also start talking to you about what are the options to sell. If you're a landscaping business and I keep coming back to that example maybe it's pretty easy to sell to another landscaping owner in the area. If you are a giant commercial cleaning company, maybe there's a private equity firm that you can sell to that might be really excited about that revenue. If you're a small mom and pop candy shop with a retail location, there might be another family that wants to buy this to create generational wealth for themselves.

Speaker 1: 15:59

So kind of talking, starting to think through who could that buyer be and what would the process of selling a business look like yeah, so I'm going to go with the marketing firms To say I just got my marketing firm evaluated, I'd use your site. And then I did a certified one and I didn't like the number, like it came in lower than what I thought. What do I do?

Speaker 2: 16:17

It happens all the time. You could always get a second opinion and sometimes if someone's really frustrated with our valuation, we'll tell them to do that. Sometimes we're really accurate and I think generally, like I said, a business will sell for about three times cash flow. So if it's in that range, more or less, you know they're probably not completely full of it and don't know what they're talking about. So I think it comes down to why are you selling the business? Do you just want to get out? Do you need a certain amount of money to fund your retirement? Are there health concerns? Are you moving and changing locations to be closer to other family members? Like, what's the real reason? And can you hold on to the business for three years and do some things to increase the value? And hopefully in that conversation you're learning about the things to increase that value. Or you say, look, this is lower than what I wanted, but I'm willing to. Let's go to market at a little bit of a higher number, see if we can get offers and maybe instead of $500,000, we can get some offers at $700,000, which is a big difference and if not, then just the price down and settle at that and just know that the valuation is probably where the thing is going to land.

Speaker 1: 17:21

Yeah, I think that's such a good point on why are you selling it and where is your journey. One thing I've been surprised by is a lot of super small business owners. Sometimes they get their dream job offer or their spouse is retiring, and one thing that I always think is worth considering is if you don't need the money right now. Hiring a president and not working in the business anymore is actually a fantastic way to increase evaluation, because you're going to get fresh energy, someone motivated. You could tie the growth of the business to their compensation package and it's like hang on and let someone else step in with that energy and motivation they need and then sell later. I think that's actually a big struggle for me personally is the idea of selling versus holding businesses for a really long time and putting in new leadership. It's funny because it's not necessarily a financial decision. It's like a life decision of like why are you selling the business, what are the other options here and could you have a better exit if you waited longer? And sometimes that's debt related, right Cause I think something that a lot of business owners don't like in their valuations is they get their valuation but they have debt and they're essentially going to sell their business to cover the debt. And then they're like I can't get anything anyways, but if you could ride it out and pay down the debt over a few years and then sell.

Speaker 2: 18:46

Totally. It's so fascinating and also just the nature of these deals Like they aren't giant deals. If you sell the business for five times the cash flow, which is the best scenario, all you do you know making what you would make in five years of holding onto the business.

Speaker 1: 19:01

Great, I know.

Speaker 2: 19:03

And I think what you're saying makes a ton of sense and it does come down to personal reasons and say, like, if you have the opportunity to hire somebody to do all of the work and you can get out of the business and you have the one, the business needs to kick off enough cash flow to incentivize that person. And then, two, you need to find the person that's that good and going to be that motivated, otherwise it's a nightmare. And I think that's it's the number one problem of business owners that we talk to. It's like hey, what's the biggest issue that you're facing right now? Oh, nine times out of 10, it's recruiting and hiring.

Speaker 1: 19:34

Yeah, people make business very tricky. And then also, like a good point you just brought up is, if you do find a person, they might buy it over time. Like you mentioned, owner financing earlier, that could be a path to that. Okay, do businesses really need business brokers? Like, I really struggle with this topic. It feels outdated, but yeah, it's still such a thing. Bye. Do we have to have business brokers?

Speaker 2: 19:59

I'm probably a little biased because we're brokering so many small business deals, so I'll start with that, but I think it's interesting to. I don't know how many tech founders also listen to this podcast, but as a tech founder it's maybe a little bit harder to understand, because part of being a tech founder is you go out and raise money for your firm and you are responsible for selling that business. If you ultimately decide to do that and I've seen that firsthand and you're expected to do that and that's like in the job description of being a tech founder.

Speaker 1: 20:27

Yeah, you think about it at day one.

Speaker 2: 20:29

Totally. You think about it day one and you're out there and it is an extreme negative signal if you have a business broker as a big tech company or like a fast-growing tech startup I've heard of. I mean, I've gotten cold emails of people being like we'll help you raise venture dollars, and that's also, of course, an extremely, extremely negative signal. So it's interesting to think about, like, the differences of that versus the Main Street Service Business Market and kind of what people expect there. And I think it comes back to it's like what's expected in the market and how are you actually gonna get the best deal? Again, if you spent your whole life operating a small Main Street business chances are one you don't know what the valuation is and you don't know how to think about that, and that's okay. Again, it would be weird if you were a candy shop owner and you knew how to do a small business valuation. And then the other thing is that, especially with these smaller businesses, like the owner has so many responsibilities most of the time that it is really hard to come out of that. Put together the exact marketing materials that make sense, keep the sale low key. A lot of these have to be very, very confidential and run that process while doing all the things that you do full time in the business. And then you also have to learn not only like how do you position this thing in the best way that's super personal to you and you're really closely tied to, and how do I position this for someone to take over my life's work, but then also like how do you put together a data room oh, also, what the heck is a data room? I don't know what that is and all the different things that buyers are gonna look for to make that process really smooth. And then just the follow up alone that you have to do to make sure buyers are still interested and move. You know this because you've raised venture before. It's a shockingly similar process, but you're trying to get a bunch of different people to the same stage in the process and keep them so. Ideally you have two weeks where you're just fielding initial buyer interest, then two weeks where you're qualifying those buyers. Two weeks where you're doing the first round of buyer seller meetings. Two weeks where you're doing the second round of buyer seller meetings in-person meetings. Two weeks where you're evaluating LOIs and then you pick an LOI and you go. You could, I'm sure any tech founders listening to this be like oh yeah, there's like the first conversation, the second conversation, then you go to IC and then-.

Speaker 1: 22:40

Yeah, term sheets of LOI Exactly, totally.

Speaker 2: 22:43

So doing all of those things, I think is it manageable and can it happen and can you have a great exit without a broker? Some brokers baton takes 6%, but a lot of brokers will take 15%, which is insane. I think it's insane. It's why we're charging one third of the price. It's just like an egregious amount, but it can be worth it because all that's so time consuming and then I guess the distinction to make is a bad business broker is terrible and super negative. So it's really important to vet that person and make sure you're working with someone who's good and has done this before and you feel like it's gonna take the care that your business deserves of the process. But a good business broker buyers really appreciate working with going through a good, clean data room, buyers really appreciate and all that's gonna make the process so much quicker. I'm spending a lot of time and we have a lot of tools that we pay a lot of money for and have developed in-house and spent a lot of money developing to keep these buyers engaged so that by the time they get to the owner, they're extremely qualified and the owner isn't wasting their time on this and then also just like the back and forth on what an offer can look like, because it does vary, like evaluation is a shot in time and they're a fickle in this market because they're not that many transactions it's not like trading equities on the stock exchange, like these things do fluctuate a lot. So sometimes the negotiations can get really personal and in my experience it's really nice to have somebody that are fielding all these different offers and just making sure. I've said this before that my main job when I'm brokering the sale of these transactions is to make sure that neither party get upset and walk away because their feelings are hurt. So it's a little bit of that and all the other things.

Speaker 1: 24:21

Yeah, I mean those are great arguments for a broker. And I think too, another one, like if you're in something specialized brokers are really helpful. Like I'm in franchising, you know there's a few players in this space that know anyone and everyone that might buy these stores. Having those relationships in that process, totally Okay. How long does it take to sell a business?

Speaker 2: 24:43

Can be quick. It so much depends and it's a lot of the work that we're doing so much depends, like how fast can you get buyers that information? And it's why, like doing something like sitting up a data room with all the things that buyers might want and making sure the listing's really clear. Now we're doing a video interviews with owners. Maybe we'll use Riverside or Subtool, but we're doing video interviews so a buyer can just come in and click to see different answers to questions and get a feel for it, so they can get all that information up front. And then they're gonna ask questions and then how fast can the owner turn around those questions? So it can happen pretty quickly.

Speaker 1: 25:15

The general it's more about how motivated you are. It sounds like, and then yeah, and it takes a lot. I think, too, your network is important, right, you know your potential buyers and you're a hustler out there pitching it.

Speaker 2: 25:27

It's probably very different than like passively, totally and just like putting a listing on a marketplace and I think to your point, like a good broker will have relationships with thousands of buyers and know the things to do to make sure it gets traction on all of the online and listing sites which are great and Baton's one of them too and we have thousands of buyers and relationships with these folks. But yeah, like we just sold the business, I think it took two months from being in market to when it closed. That seller was really motivated and they were willing to be flexible on price and terms to get the deal done because they wanted out. Now, if you're an owner and you're like, hey, I know the valuation was 1.7 million, but I'm not gonna sell for anything less than 2.5 million, and it has to be this perfect type of buyer and they have to have this background and they have to say that they're gonna treat my employees like this, then these things become more difficult. The general time that people say is six to nine months to close the deal. My feeling is that if you're not getting offers and LOIs within three to four months, there's probably something wrong either with the process or just how you're thinking about selling the business.

Speaker 1: 26:31

Okay, that's good to know. Okay, we've talked a lot about data rooms being prepared to sell. So, as a small business owner, what kind of information do I need to provide a prospective buyer? Which is essentially like what do they populate the data room with? Everything?

Speaker 2: 26:49

I've been thinking about this a lot lately. It's like what do most buyers really want to know? What I feel is it's like how much money does the business make? How do I verify this? How does the revenue work? What's the motion to making more money? What's the consistency of this revenue? What are the expenses? Why are the expenses? Again, same thing are they real? You can see some of that through tax returns, through income statements. Looking at the balance sheets, then it's like how risky is this revenue? Are there key employees that are going to leave? Is there customer concentration risk? How do I verify these things? Yeah, I mean, it is so much, as much as you're willing to give, because these buyers, they're going to ask every single question. If you're hiding something, any buyer who is going to put down $100,000 or more is going to add some really big decision. They're going to ask all of the different questions about the business. So it can get pretty extraneous. Or what are you not comfortable sharing? Okay, we can hold off on that, but we're going to have to get into it at some point, likely to sell the business.

Speaker 1: 27:50

There. Yeah, it's funny because it is so much venture like a data room, I know for me. I just always keep mine up to date. I link to a company scorecard that is updated monthly. The data room is being updated monthly essentially. Yeah, it's like that idea that in venture we're ready to sell from day one. If you can think like that as a small business owner, you're going to be better positioned. It's actually like keeping a data room updated regularly too. It helps you stay in the mindset of being sellable. You'll catch things where you're like oh, this doesn't look good, I should change this about the company or how we do cash flow. We've talked a lot about it throughout. But last question is just learning more about how Baton is helping small businesses sell. If you could just bring that all together for us so we can ask small business owners who are listening know exactly how you all might play a role in that process for us.

Speaker 2: 28:45

My favorite thing to talk about. I think one of the things that we realized when we were starting the business is that a lot of small business owners don't know how much their business is worth. We think that's kind of the first step. Everything on Baton today starts with a free valuation. You go through a process takes about 10 minutes. As a business owner, you answer a bunch of questions about the business. You give us access to your financials, which we can do really seamlessly thanks to some technology partners. Then we take right now we're turning around valuation like a couple of business days, which is incredible. Most times it takes three months, but we're really laser focused on making sure the owner has a good experience. You get that valuation back. Maybe you work with us a little bit more, like I said, to make sure that we're accurately valuing the business. We might have some questioning through that process and then we present you with a number. From there we kick it to the owner. We're like where do you want to go from here? You say if all you wanted to do was know how much your business is worth and you're not interested in selling for another five, 10 years, great, we'll make a note to follow up in three years from now and check in, or maybe a year, and we can refresh your valuation and just see how things are changing over time. Over time we'll be incorporating a lot more products to make that. There's the no path, where you just want to know your valuation. There's the grow path, where we can support you in growing your business over time and tracking that. Then, of course, there's the sell path. If you're interested in selling, you can work with Baton. Generally, the structure of these things is we charge a 6% fee and we take a monthly retainer for the first six months to make sure that the owner is really engaged. Then from there, after we sign an agreement with that owner, we get to work on putting marketing materials together. We get a little bit deeper of what are the real things that make the business special and how are we going to market this to folks. We put the data room together, we put the marketing materials together, the owner approves all of that and then we go to market. We have relationships with all of the biggest business listing sites, so we guarantee that anybody who's buying a business or would be interested in buying the business is going to see this thing we have, like I said, thousands of buyers on Baton who are really qualified and can do deals really quickly and deep relationships across a lot of different industries and a lot of capital that's able to be deployed. Then we also have the owner give us a couple of businesses that might be good to potentially acquire the business. We go and we have a database of over four million businesses and we enhance that list of businesses that they gave us. Then we run what we call a competitor outreach campaign. But it's like anybody who we think would be a good acquirer and a good home for this business campaign and we reach out to those folks. Then we're drumming up all this demand. Then from there we manage that demand. Like I said, we qualify the buyers a lot of back and forth. Then, after we qualify a buyer and if the buyer is still interested, then we move to a buyer seller meeting and then we support the buyer and getting the materials that they need and getting comfortable to spend an LOI, they spend an LOI. We help through the diligence process and then we close. Then we celebrate.

Speaker 1: 31:38

Yeah, so you're like full service beginning to end selling a bit sense.

Speaker 2: 31:42

Yeah, also. I think what's really special and one thing that I feel really good about it's been cool, I guess, for me something I didn't expect when starting this business is how personal it is. I was going over somebody's valuation a couple of months ago and we were walking through it and they started crying to me. They were like I just never thought that I would be able to sell the business and this seems so attainable now. We do that for free, right? I think that's what's really special. That person hasn't even signed a contract with us yet. I think they will eventually. But either way, it's just a great place to start the journey. The fact that we can take people all the way through that want to go all the way through to me is a bonus.

Speaker 1: 32:20

So cool. Well, Dylan, thank you so much for being here, Thanks.

Speaker 2: 32:23

Steph.

Speaker 1: 32:24

Really enjoyed having you learn so much and then for everyone listening. Thanks so much for listening to the funded podcast. I hope you found this episode informative and helpful. Subscribe to our podcast Also on social, for other great content and we look forward to seeing you next time.