The firm’s Founder saw a “untapped vertical” of potential business for its Partners back in 2009. A part of this vision was to create services for this untapped vertical that would provide to our Partners fees that wildly exceeded anything offered in the market. He realized this would not be easy and began the process to invent tools, along with other Partners and experts. Some of the tools invented were:
- Client Agreements that comply with the SEC and FINRA. Those Agreements were created and published in 2015.
- A book to educate business owners and the firm’s Partners. That book, The Exit Strategy Handbook, was published in 2013 and is now an award-winning book.
- Due diligence software, which was published in 2013. That product, B2B Exit® Software, was awarded two patents by the United States Patent and Trademark Office, one in 2019 and another in 2021.
- The internal educational course, Certified Business Transition Expert™, which was published in 2015 and has continuously been taught to Partners.
All of the above were created to help our Partners to service this “untapped vertical,” which we call the Large Check. This phrase has two meanings:
- External – Helping our clients earn a 7-8 figure check with this opportunity.
- Internal – Helping our Partners to earn significantly higher-than-market fees. ($1,000 to $16,000 an hour.)
Our latest Large Check success story
Our previous record for an internal Large Check was $350,000, which was earned by a Partner in Northern California. Our newest record is $375,000, earned by a partner from the Northeast in March 2022. Below are key points we can learn from this success story.
- Success Feeling – When asked how it felt to be paid the Large Check, our Partner stated, “It really didn’t hit home until right before and after the close. An attorney asked for an invoice and I created an invoice for $375,000. I did not expect that I would have such an emotional response when creating and sending such an invoice. The second emotional response was when I looked at my smartphone and saw the money had been wired into my bank account.”
- Confidence – “I realized that I had a lot to do with the success of the growth of the company. I helped negotiate and increase the company’s bank line of credit. I had a lot to do with the company’s success, such as the negotiating better lines of credit, PPP loans, strategizing a pivot when Covid hit, etc.”
- Our Exit Agreement (ESA) #1 – This Partner pulled our ESA Agreement from our File Library. “The Agreements forced me to think to add value to the client,” he said. “I needed to have a conversation (with the owner) to sell the value.” This caused him to be able to create a plan and to articulate why he was worth the $375,000 in Additional Compensation. (Note: the ESA Agreement states, “The parties acknowledge and agree that they have included … as part of the Compensation due to the B2B CFO® partner under this Agreement because of their efforts increasing the value of the Business…”)
- Our Exit Agreement (ESA) #2 – The second value our ESA provided was in the professionalism of the Agreement. “The client wanted to know the bottom-line number and did not care about the detail as long as I was going to be able to provide the value.” “I did not have to worry about the minutia of the deal.” In other words, the owner picked up a pen and signed the ESA Agreement when he understood the value our Partner was to provide.
- Our Exit Agreement (ESA) #3 – In retrospect, this Partner feels he should have presented the ESA Agreement to the client “much earlier” in the process. This was a good lesson learned.
- Relationships – One of the things this Partner used was to sell the value he brought to the table was in going over relationships he had brought to the company, such as professionals for the Employee Retention Tax Credit, the Investment Banker and other business relationships he had introduced to the owner.
- Sharing the Wealth – The owner initially had heart-burn over the Additional Compensation asked by our Partner with the presentation of the ESA Agreement. The owner, however, felt our Partner added significant value. The owner went to the Investment Banker and negotiated their fee down in order to pay much of the additional fee to our Partner.
- Win-Win-Win-Win – There were at least four winners with this event (1) the seller (2) the investment banker (3) the buyer and (4) our Partner.
