Jay Sachetti joined Jeff O’Brien, partner at Husch Blackwell and Dyanne Ross-Hanson, president of Exit Planning Strategies talked about the market for mergers and acquisitions, exit planning opportunities for companies that don’t end up for sale and how companies can maximize their eventual sale price during an early October panel at the first Upsize on Tap event at Summit Brewing Co. in St. Paul.
When the state Legislature passed a law requiring employers to provide paid leave and safe time for employees, Justin Bieganek started hearing differing details from friends, colleagues and peers.
“The best time to move ahead is the worst times.” So declares Barbara Corcoran, the fast-talking New York real estate mogul and judge on ABC’s hit show “Shark Tank,” who’s the perfect interview as business owners everywhere face tough times.
I got a boost from her in an interview recently that I had to share, even though she’s not local as my typical sources are. “Established works against you in bad times because you protect your turf. I can tell you so many times that I could sniff out a weakness in my competitors—cockiness. They were cocky, big and protecting,” Corcoran said. “The larger companies in bad times hide. It’s prudent to wait it out, because they have a lot of money and they don’t want to lose it.”
She recalls trying to sell New York residences when interest rates hit 18 percent. (Remember that? It makes today’s 6.5 percent seem almost free.) “People were losing faith. I didn’t have an answer: nobody was buying anything. We were starving at Corcoran Group. I was really trying to stay in business, maybe one more week,” she says.
A large insurance company wanted her to sell 88 apartments scattered throughout several Class C buildings, “a smorgasbord of losers,” as she recalls. “I told them there really wasn’t any way,” but then got to thinking about her mother, who once took her passel of children to see a chicken farmer across the river in New Jersey, selling puppies out of a box.
“They were so adorable, and there was a line of fancy cars. The people getting out of the cars looked like freaks. They had makeup on, they had fancy clothes on, they were New Yorkers! And they were getting in line to buy puppies” because there were only seven available.
She had her brokers announce a secret sale, one day only, only for their best clients. “When I hit the sales office, there were 150 waiting in line for the 88 apartments. We sold them within an hour,” she said.
On “Shark Tank,” where entrepreneurs compete to gain an investment from the judges, she looks for one main quality. “I’m trying to ascertain if the person is good at bouncing back. There’s no such thing as a business plan that works. The minute you get on the street, nothing goes to plan,” she said. “People steal, markets fall down, interest rates go up three points. You’re going to be assured you’re going to walk into a changed environment every year.”
The entrepreneurs she tries to avoid? “They lack one quality, they feel sorry for themselves. When I find an entrepreneur that starts blaming—the minute people are pointing outward versus just shut up. ‘I have a problem. How am I going to fix it?’” is what she’s waiting to hear.
“These are the best times to move ahead, when everybody’s scared, because the checkerboard gets rewritten. Your customer you’re doing business with, they change in changing times. They want something differently, you catch them differently,” she said.
What about you? How will you catch your customers differently, during a rocky today and an uncertain tomorrow?
