Business Owner Resources

Making the decision to sell your business is not an easy one. Knowing when and why you should sell can be even harder to justify, because there’s no cut-and-dried reason or moment of clarity to indicate when it’s time. While most business owners don’t wake up one day saying, “I’m ready to sell,” there are a few common instances that can bring about the need to sell a business. As a founder, the ability to recognize these reasons to sell can be critical in making an informed decision about where to take your company next. With this in mind, we’ve compiled a list of common reasons we’ve seen founders give as the sellers of their businesses below.

Professional Reasons

From gaps in operations to perfect timing, many founders discover a need to sell within the operations of the business itself. The most common of these discoveries include:

1. Company Performance
   When considering a sale, one of the first things a founder should consider is the current state of the market and the performance of your business within it. When a sale is properly aligned with a company’s peak performance and a healthy, flourishing market, the founder is then able to sell their company for its maximum value.


2. Additional Capital
   Feeling stuck? No avenues for sustainable growth? No bandwidth for value creation? Bringing a trusted partner into the mix can give you more access to capital and add more networks to your own, giving way for greater growth.


3. Future Planning
   The partner themselves could also serve as the added skill needed on your team to help propel your business to the next level. With the added value of a partner that supports your vision for the company, tasks like succession planning and discussing the future happen more naturally.

Personal Reasons

Beyond the purely business-oriented reasons to sell, many founders encounter personal situations that prompt a need or want to sell. Common personal grounds for a sale often include:

1. Health concerns


2. Family matters


3. Retirement

As aforementioned, reality is rarely as simple as picking a single reason to sell. Every founder’s situation is different, and there are often a combination of reasons (possibly listed above) that drive the sale of a business. However, an uninformed sale provoked by a sudden personal or professional situation can lead to poorly done and/or rushed transactions. We highly recommend founders stay knowledgeable and prepared regarding the future of their business for this reason.

Selling with a Flexible Partner

After making the decision to sell your business, the next step is discussing how you want to sell. A critical point for all founders to keep in mind is that, with the right partner for you, selling does not equal losing all control over your company.

When working with a partner like Georgia Oak, founders have the ability to choose how and when they want to sell. Rather than feeling locked into a single fund with strict bylaws and guidelines, our various sources of capital support our partners in ways others cannot. This gives us the freedom to work with founders in minority and majority equity deals. With this increased flexibility and support, founders have the insurance that their partner (Georgia Oak) will meet their goals.

For more information, check out our explanation of Minority vs. Majority Deals.