Scaling Up Business with Bill Gallagher 261 - Elliott Holland — Understanding the Due Diligence Process
Interested in buying a business and you’d like to know what goes on behind the scenes? Any good investor or buyer will first conduct their due diligence and verify the business does what it says it does. This week’s guest talks all about it!
Elliott Holland is the Founder of Guardian Due Diligence and he helps entrepreneurs select businesses, underwrites them, and then performs due diligence checks to make sure entrepreneurs aren't getting taken advantage of by sellers or brokers.
Elliott usually sees deals anywhere from $1-5 million dollars in purchase price and they usually take about 3-6 months to close. However, if you’re doing the due diligence process correctly, it can take over a year to find the right business and deal for you.
You’d be surprised by how many people are willing to lie about their business and fudge the numbers. Buyers, if you’re paying for 6-8x cash flow, a lot of sellers will lie. Elliott shares some of his first-hand experiences as to why certain deals just don’t go through.
Little clues about the sellers can give you all sorts of information about their character, and the type of business they’re operating. If the person doesn’t quite ‘fit the bill’ when it comes to the industry they’re operating in, it should be looked at a little more closely. There’s always an opportunity to commit fraud.
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