OWL 706 Life After Exit: How to Plan What Comes Next After a Business Sale

Well, you know, I'll start with the nomad bit. I would say a couple of years ago I sold an agency 6 years ago. And I realized that I could have a life and a business that I could run from anywhere, and this is not a new idea. The internet allows us to be very mobile and of course in the past 9 to 10 months. It's mind blowing how many people have realized that they don't have to sit in their home in Cincinnati to run a business. So I think whether we wanted it or not, many people are somewhat nomad-like, and many of them are starting to think that, well, gee, you know, maybe I could live somewhere else. So that's, you know, more of a global perspective on the fact that I can do my business anywhere and it's simply because it all I need is a telephone and an internet connection.

Yeah, that certainly has become something that's changing a lot of trends today. It's a lot of people are, I guess they were always, you know, the last 5 years or so able to do it, but it was just this pandemic that really maybe made their companies ready to have them work mobile or are they required them to work mobile. So when you, when you, you were ahead of your time when you first did that, did you, did you have any, any regrets or any issues or any hiccups?

Well, I'd say the only thing that happens is I miss humans, and I again, I'll say that, you know, this is very personal for me, but it's affecting a lot of people right now. I realized that if I can do my job in, let's say Saigon, which I've done on the phone and on the internet with people, it's all. Until really this year it was generally talking to people, let's just say on the phone now with Zoom, etc. we're at least seeing each other, which is positive. So I'd say the maybe the most difficult thing is if you do move around a lot is you're not doing business face to face. And I miss that. I'm an ad guy. I'm a marketing person, you know, I like, even though I love radio, by the way.

Yeah, yeah, no, I hear you. That that's, that's one thing I hear a lot of people say that they do miss is it's the face to face and of course we all hope we'll be back to some level of that at some point soon. So really, when you sold your business it's 2012, right, and and you were, did you already know what you wanted to do because a lot of our listeners are in a stage, Peter, where they're saying. I want to exit my business. I'm not sure exactly what I want to do after that. Maybe it'll come to me. Maybe they have hobbies established. Did you have a post-business plan?

Absolutely. And in fact, I realized a couple of months ago as I was talking to more businesses and business leaders that were starting to think about changing their lifestyle, and that's a function of maybe pure business, it's also a function of age. I decided to write something called How to Sell an advertising Agency. And a key element of that is my talking about Why I sold businesses, how I thought about my future, and when I say why, it wasn't just financial, it was, there was a lot of emotion in it. And then, you know, generally for anybody selling a business, there's a lot of emotion.

I realized something two weeks ago. I went to the beach in Mexico to think and I realized that I'm, I'm gonna, even though this is the how to sell advertising, how to sell an advertising agency is, you can get it for free on my website. I am going to rewrite it and just call it how to sell a business, and I know that that's something near and dear to your heart. And an element of this is really knowing what am I going to do after I sell this thing. And unfortunately, according to a lot of mergers and acquisition friends, a lot of business owners actually don't think that through. You know what, playing golf every day just doesn't cut it for most people. Mhm.

Right, right, yeah, yeah, they, they think that this will be great. I'll do this, but then they realize that quickly becomes tedious and boring and so, so what was your, what was your plan? What your plan was to to continue to consult and travel and what what was your plan?

Well, there have been, you know, each, each purchase and sale had its own reasons. The last one, when I sold an advertising agency in Portland, I sold it because I saw the business changing. There was no question it was a less lucrative, less interesting, more complex business with the addition of social media, you know, it just became a lot crazier, and I knew, I really thought through who I could sell it to, how to sell it. How to get my price, not worry about the price, you know, not saying, boy, I'm going to make bundles, you know, one has to be realistic. And I said, once I sell it, I'm going to take a year off and think about things, and I traveled through Asia. But while it was happening, while that, you know, sitting again like in a Saigon or a Thailand, my agency friend said, Well, you're really good at at sales and business development. Can you help us? And I realized that, yeah, I could make money by being anywhere.

And today I live in Mexico, in central Mexico, in a gorgeous town just named the best small city in the world by Conde Nas traveler, which is kind of crazy, but I think you do have to think about what you want to do. I gave myself some time to do that, and I will say, you know, sometimes things happen whether you know it or not. I didn't really think I would be a consultant, but I did, and consulting is a great business, and again, you can do it from anywhere.

Well, certainly there's a lot of people that have a lot of knowledge because they've they've built up businesses or they've done things and there's others that are looking for that and, you know, these days there's an internet that that connects people together for that. So yeah, how, how do you get your consulting gigs? Is it from people that know of your reputation or they, or they, has the internet helped in in helping you find gigs, if you will?

Well, I, you know, I do this for a living. I counsel companies on how they can grow, and I would say, and it's, things have changed. So we have to be careful here. When I started a few years ago, on social media, and I now have over 800 blog posts, I have a podcast. I'm fairly active on LinkedIIn. It's, it was easier even 8 years ago it was easier than it is today.

But the bottom line is most of my business comes to me because people find me and they find me through what is called content marketing. I write a lot. I write books. I am very helpful. I tell people, if you, if you want me to help you, give me a call. We'll talk for free for a while if that helps. And if you want to hire me, great. If you don't, I'll give you some good ideas. I'm a friendly guy. So I would say social media is the primary way I get business. However, if there are companies I know I want to work with, I go directly to them with what I call insights. I don't say, Hey, I want to talk to you. I say, Hey, here, I've been thinking about your industry. Here's some ideas you want to talk sometime. So it's both, but I would say primarily people find.

So, from, from your bio, I, I, I took it that you, you were one of the pioneers of the early folks in creating content marketing, and you've won awards from the Association of National Advertisers for programs for, for big companies. So what is that all about? What is Content marketing in a nutshell about creating effective content. Obviously there's a method to it, and we probably don't have time to talk about that all today, but in a nutshell, what would you say the content marketing, where do people start with that?

Well, you start, I think like any marketing program, you think about who your audience is and what are their problems, what opportunities are they looking for, and you write for them or you create videos, short ones, one minute videos are great, and there's so many tools to use today. It's just mind blowing. I mean, there are a lot of ways to get in front of people. Facebook works for certain kinds of businesses. Instagram works for certain kinds of businesses. But the bottom line is, start to write. I think writing is the key element here and write about what people need to hear and want to hear, and that is content marketing.

Now for a lot of our listeners. Yeah, go ahead. I'm sorry, I was going to say for a lot of our listeners that are maybe baby boomer age, I'm 61, so around my age they might think, well, maybe I'll write a long article or something like that that's technical, but that's not really content marketing is more about a lot of short type of material, right, because it's you've got to appeal to today's consumer of content.

Well, there's a degree of controversy surrounding the length. I mix it up. I have some articles and even little books I write that are very long, and the advantage of writing something long or a book is you can cut it up into those smaller pieces, so you're actually accomplishing two things at the same time. I would say yes, people have short attention spans. Absolutely, you know, let's face it, I usually counsel people if they make a video and it's so easy to make a video now just talk into your computer and record it, just make sure your background's nice and the sound is good. One minute. I mean how much can we really handle, you know, it's we're in a world where things move fast, but if something is appealing, people will read it. There's absolutely no question.

Good point, good point. And there's a lot of ways to repurpose, as you mentioned, a lot of ways to, you can, you can take all of your short content and create a book if you want to these days. It's really, there's really so many ways to do it. You can create videos on YouTube and all kinds of different things.

So here's something that I read that was interesting about you, and that is that when you sold your last business, you sat down with your accountant and your accountant told you, you know how much money you have. You know where I'm going with this. You know how much you spend, but not how long it has to last, and you wrote a book. Tell us about the book in 2012.

Well, it's a, it's a book called Boomer Side from Woodstock is in the concert from, from Woodstock to Suicide. And I, it, it's a very serious book, but it has a baby boomer-centric idea, which is that we don't know how long we're going to be around, so it's very difficult to do financial planning. So I suggested, and this came out of a conversation with my, with my accountant. That if you pick a date to off yourself, and I want to be very careful here because, you know, I understand suicide and I understand that it's sometimes due to a mental illness, but my point is, if you say 85, then you know how much hot toast you have and how far that powdered butter, which is your the the amount of money you have is going to make it. You know, the last thing we all want to do is the unfortunate, I don't know how to say this, and I'm being, you know, I'm, I'm being very straight here, you know, the, the nursing home problem. This, and so I wrote this book, very serious, but it it resonates with baby boomers, just, just the idea does. It's a weird one and I admit it.

Well, you're floating a concept and it's certainly your right to do that. I understand what you're saying. It's these days we hear so much about people whose lives are kind of elongated against, you know, their will, not, you know, against their best wishes certainly, and, and a couple of things it does is it eats up a lot of their, their capital. It's just hard to know when to say. Goodbye, I guess. So we'll leave it at that. How about that? But interesting. So it's called Boomercide from Woodstock to Suicide. Interesting, interesting name for a book, and I'm sure it's stirred up some controversy for you as well.

And so what's life like in Mexico and how did you make the decision to move to Mexico and how do you like it? Well, that's a great question, and I'll just let your audience know I have a blog post called Moving to Mexico and it discusses it starts out talking about me and how we made a decision and then it gets at the bottom. There's a lot of information about why Mexico, how do you move here, and so forth.

Well, next, my wife and I said, let's try a year internationally. Let's live somewhere internationally. Well, we're restricted in terms of where you can go for a year, as we know right now with the American passport, unfortunately it's down to 10 or 15 countries. That's another story. But forgetting that there are certain countries that actually allow you to live in country more than 3 months. without having to go renew your visa all the time, Mexico's one of them. Panama is as well. There, there are a few.

So the decision for Mexico is it's near the United States. I have multiple airports that get me to major cities. It's, you know, Mexicans understand American culture. There are a lot of expats here. I believe it's the number one expat country. I live in a town, this beautiful town where there are a lot of American expats. The cost of living is, I, sometimes I say 20 to 30% of the United States. You can buy property here, you know, so many reasons to live in Mexico, plus Mexican food is good and Mexicans are wonderful people. So there are a lot of things going for it, but I think the most important is that you can actually move here legally. And that's not the case. You can't move to London very easily. It doesn't work very well.

Mhm, mhm, yeah, yeah, it's an interesting, I mean, a lot of people make choices on, you know, where they might want to live out their life, and again, like you said, your dollar goes further, you're, you're, you're close to being able to get back, I guess, if you need to, but back to the US, but do you, do you, how do you, so you've been there now for how long? 4 years.

4 years, do you anticipate staying there for a long, much longer, or a long time or forever, or what's your, well, I always say who knows my lifestyle is that we own our house here. It's a great home base. Again, it's a great city, a small city, high cultural value here. We can leave if we want normally, you know, times are a little different today. And I have to admit, mainly because I have a son in New York and I grew up in New York. I'm not going to move back to the New York area and I have a daughter in Argentina with a baby and a husband. I don't know where, I don't even know. I can't even come up with a place in the United States that I would move to. It's, you know, we keep naming places and it's a tough one, and that's a big business, you know, helping people figure out where to move to in the United States or internationally. because a lot of, a lot of people want to move somewhere.

One of the more interesting searches that's booming on Google is how do I get another country's passport? These are Americans for one reason or another are saying, gee, how do I get a European Union passport? And there are ways to buy into passports from other countries. And unfortunately a reason for that is, you know, our American passport for a lot of reasons is not as welcome as we always thought it would be.

It's very weird in a way, very weird, yeah, very strange times and again a lot of people like you mentioned are on the move because of various reasons, but you know you have a You have the pandemic that's allowed people to work virtually from anywhere, and they may have been living in somewhere very expensive. There's fires that are driving people away, all kinds of reasons why people are looking for different areas to move to. So that's, that is an important topic. Yeah, well, congratulations on finding a spot that you really love. That's fantastic.

Tell us, so let's talk, let's wind up with talking a little bit more about your book How to Sell Your advertising Agency, because really, This works for any business, and as you mentioned, it's a lot about understanding why you're selling and what you're going to do next. What are some of the key tips that you would maybe tease the book a little bit for our listeners about? Well, and I know this is something near to your heart.

It takes time to Make to shine up your business, whether you're a dry cleaning shop or a marketing company or you manufacture widgets, you can't and shouldn't wake up on a Monday and say I'm going to sell my agency and then throw it out there for for the sale. I think you need to really think hard about how to make it look more valuable if it requires cutting costs, great, if it requires buying certain. Equipment great if it needs a slight business model shift, great. If you need to up your marketing, it's important and I think that takes about a year or more. I know that you, you know, you tell people, I think it's start thinking 5 years ahead. You can't wake up on a Monday and just and just throw it out because I don't think you're going to get the price that you want. So that's a key element.

I think that people really need to understand the financials of their business and take a hard look with an accountant or an M&A specialist today and say, OK, how can I make this business look better to a buyer? And even, and this is a strange one, and it's mainly because I'm a marketer, make your numbers look good. I mean, have a package that you're going to give to a buyer where they're impressed with you. They think, wow, you understand marketing, you understand how to present information. Spruce it up is really my bottom line here with that.

And at the end of the game, you know, learn how to negotiate. Most of us don't do negotiation for a living. So if you need an adviser to help you negotiate, get it. And you know, while you're at it, I, I would suggest that people look at some YouTube videos on how to negotiate because the person on the other side of the table wants to pay you less.

Very good points, very good points, yeah, shining it up is says a lot actually for, for a car, it's one thing for a business it's quite another because you have a lot of facets to the business and really, really good points there. Now your website is at Peter, is it Levitan or Levitan? I'm sorry, I don't want to name.

Well, Levitin funny, you know, there are, there are lights, which is L E V I T O N. Uh my last name is L E V I T A N, so it's Peter Levitan dot com. When I was in the dating world, Levitin makes light switches and I used to date women I would say, are you in that family? Are you, can you never mind. Are you, are you the switch guy? OK.

All right, well, hey, it was great talking with you. Thanks so much for joining me today. It's been a really fascinating interview, and I wish you the best of luck and remember the books, ladies and gentlemen out there, how to sell your advertising agency and Boomercide from Woodstock to suicide and look up Peter's website and, you know, give him a call, let him know that you want to talk about. Of how you can get ready to do something different in your life, something substantial. You've certainly learned a lot along the way, Peter. Thank you so much for joining us. My pleasure. Thank you.