A Composite Example
By Rod Johnston, MBA, CMA
Dave built his HVAC company over 22 years. Fourteen trucks, forty employees, revenue north of $4M. He always figured he’d sell someday. He just never got around to planning for it.
At 61, a health scare made “someday” feel a lot closer. He called us.
The problem wasn’t the business, Dave’s business was solid. The problem was that nobody else could run it. Every big account, every vendor relationship, every pricing call ran through Dave personally. His ops manager could handle the day-to-day, but not the day a buyer’s advisor started asking questions.
We spent the next eighteen months documenting what only Dave knew, building a real management layer underneath him, and getting a current valuation instead of the number he’d been carrying around in his head from a conversation at a trade show three years earlier.
When Dave finally listed, buyers didn’t just see a good HVAC business. They saw one that would run exactly the same way the day after closing as it did the day before. That’s what got him a premium over the number he expected, and a clean exit with almost no post-sale headaches.
Dave isn’t one person. He’s a composite, the timeline, the trucks, the health scare are illustrative, not any one client’s story. But the pattern is real, and we see it constantly in HVAC: the businesses that sell well are the ones where the owner stopped being the business years before they sold.
If any part of Dave’s story sounds familiar, that’s usually a sign it’s time to start the conversation, not a sign you’ve waited too long.
High Mark’s expert advisors are always available for a complimentary consultation on planning for the sale of your business and what life could be after your sale. Call or e-mail us anytime to schedule a consultation. You can reach us at info@hmexit.com.