Brady: I've heard a lot of negative perceptions of SBA financing, right? But you were one of the first ones that had a very positive perception about it. So I'm, I'm interested to understand why you feel that way, and if you can expand upon that for our audience.
Dan: Well, I think one of our, our SBA lenders was, uh, part of the group paying for that lunch, so Yeah, fair enough.
Brady: Fair enough. Yeah. Yep. You were hungry. No, that, that is, uh, I, I run into lots of folks that are just think the SBA, they're terrified for it or they think it's because, um. It's some kind of, uh, you know, you can't high risk, you can't get a loan anywhere else, lender of last resort kind of thing. Um, which is not the case at all.
Dan: Um, they've got guidelines and everything. The, the biggest differentiator is your typical conventional lender is most likely gonna look for those hard assets as collateral for their loan. When you have this business, like we talked about in a minute ago, that you have this goodwill piece in the brand and the, the longevity and just all the things, you know, there's a, a value to that.
Brady: And the SBA will absolutely lend on that because they're looking at that cash flow. Which dovetails back into that whole, Hey, we really want to figure out what the real cash flow is outta your business.
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Brady: I'm interested, uh, what's your response to buyers, whether somebody coming in wanting to be an entrepreneur for the first time, or it's another business coming in and buying that business? What's your response to those that think, "Yeah, as long as there's a management team in place of that business, I'm buying that. Yeah. I can kind of kick my feet up on this one." Well, what's your response to that?
Dan: Well, I try to get off the phone as soon as I can. Yeah. So we do get that a lot. Um, and it's part of the education process. I think for the most part, you know, to, to your real estate point, people try to draw some para parallels. If you don't have the time or capacity to do that, then that would make it difficult to get that ROI you were mentioning, just because you end up having to hire somebody or somebodies because you're, you're not gonna stay at your full-time, you know, career and, and be able to run. It's not a car wash.
Brady: Yeah. I tell people the same thing and you could look at it after that and determine whether you can begin to pull back, but. Do not go in with the intent that yeah, just you're gonna come in five hours a week and kind of check on things and do some leadership meetings and stuff.
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Brady: What's the worst personal business sales story you could share with us? Like where just something just completely eroded or like, man, the skeleton's in the closet. I'm just really interested to understand like what's the worst you've come across?
Dan: Well, hope this counts, but, um, so I've been in the business valuation space or, you know, acquiring and, and divesting small businesses my whole career. So I've been around a lot of small businesses, but for this one in particular here, when I first got into the, uh, when I. Brokerage firm. I made a trip to a suburb of Houston, um, to deliver some valuation news. And we kind of went through our whole thing of here's what it looks like and here's what you're gonna net. And I could tell it wasn't really, we weren't quite at the expectation level of the owner. So, you know, okay, we did our thing and, you know, I left. And then the next morning I saw headline and looked into it and, uh, the business burned to the ground that night. So, oh man, I don't know.
Brady: Oh, I never, that would be very suspicious.