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The Most Expensive Mistake Canadian Owners Make Before Selling · Selling Your Canadian Business

• 0:30
  SPEAKER_00: You spend, what, 20 or 30 years building a business from the ground up, right?
• 0:34
  SPEAKER_00: You pour your blood, your sweat, your tears into this thing.
• 0:37
  SPEAKER_00: Uh it effectively becomes your entire life.
• 0:40
  SPEAKER_00: But, and this is the crazy part, when it's finally time to sell that business, most owners will spend just 20 or 30 days picking the team of people who are supposed to help them sell it.
• 0:51
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 0:51
  SPEAKER_01: It's it's wild.
• 0:53
  SPEAKER_00: Right.
• 0:53
  SPEAKER_00: That math simply does not work.
• 0:55
  SPEAKER_00: So thank you so much for joining us today for this deep dive.
• 0:58
  SPEAKER_00: We are taking a really hard look at a situation of just just staggering scale that's happening right now in the business world, and we're mapping out the ultimate playbook for navigating it.
• 1:09
  SPEAKER_01: Aaron Powell Yeah, and we really are talking about a massive structural shift here.
• 1:12
  SPEAKER_01: Uh according to the Canadian Federation of Independent Business, something like 76% of Canadian small business owners are planning to exit their businesses within the next decade.
• 1:21
  SPEAKER_00: Aaron Powell Wow.
• 1:23
  SPEAKER_00: Seventy-six percent.
• 1:24
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 1:25
  SPEAKER_01: We are talking about more than$2 trillion in business assets poised to change hands.
• 1:31
  SPEAKER_01: $2 trillion.
• 1:32
  SPEAKER_01: Yet despite those incredibly high stakes, um only 9% of owners have a formal written succession plan.
• 1:40
  SPEAKER_01: And nearly half, uh 46% to be exact, have absolutely nothing plan at all.
• 1:46
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, they are walking into the largest transaction of their career totally blind.
• 1:50
  SPEAKER_00: Trevor Burrus, Jr.: Which is exactly why we're pulling insights directly from Carly Sigaris Jr.'s book, Selling Your Canadian Business.
• 1:57
  SPEAKER_00: We're going to explore why assembling a highly specialized advisory team is worth literally millions of dollars in final enterprise value.
• 2:04
  SPEAKER_00: And why putting that team together a full 24 months before you actually go to market is well, it's the single most lucrative decision an owner can make.
• 2:12
  SPEAKER_01: Exactly.
• 2:12
  SPEAKER_01: Because the gap between a business owner's ambition and their actual preparation, that's where deals fall apart or where massive amounts of wealth are just left sitting on the table.
• 2:20
  SPEAKER_01: Right.
• 2:21
  SPEAKER_01: The outcome of your sale depends a lot less on what your business is worth on a spreadsheet today and much, much more on who is sitting right beside you when the process begins.
• 2:29
  SPEAKER_00: So I want to push back on that right away, actually.
• 2:32
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 2:32
  SPEAKER_00: Because my immediate thought, and I imagine this is true for a lot of you listening who own successful businesses, is about loyalty.
• 2:39
  SPEAKER_00: Trevor Burrus, Jr.
• 2:39
  SPEAKER_01: Right.
• 2:39
  SPEAKER_00: Of course.
• 2:40
  SPEAKER_00: Trevor Burrus, Jr.
• 2:40
  SPEAKER_00: Like if I have a corporate lawyer and a tax accountant who have been with me for 15 years, they helped me build this company.
• 2:47
  SPEAKER_00: We survived recessions, uh, supply chain crises together.
• 2:51
  SPEAKER_00: To suddenly go out and hire a whole new team just to sell it, it feels like I don't know, it feels like firing your head coach right before you play in the championship game.
• 3:01
  SPEAKER_00: Isn't that just a massive, redundant expense?
• 3:04
  SPEAKER_01: It is a totally natural response to feel that loyalty.
• 3:08
  SPEAKER_01: It really is.
• 3:09
  SPEAKER_01: But practically speaking, sticking with your generalist team is the single most expensive mistake a Canadian owner can make.
• 3:14
  SPEAKER_00: Really?
• 3:15
  SPEAKER_00: The most expensive mistake.
• 3:16
  SPEAKER_01: Oh, absolutely.
• 3:16
  SPEAKER_01: To use your sports analogy, uh, you aren't just playing in a championship game.
• 3:20
  SPEAKER_01: You spent 20 years playing basketball, and the championship game is suddenly water polo.
• 3:24
  SPEAKER_00: Okay.
• 3:24
  SPEAKER_00: Wow, that's a that's a big shift.
• 3:26
  SPEAKER_01: Aaron Powell Right.
• 3:26
  SPEAKER_01: The entire environment, the rules, the physics of the game, they have completely changed.
• 3:30
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 3:31
  SPEAKER_01: General practice does not transfer to mergers and acquisitions.
• 3:34
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, MA is its own highly specialized discipline.
• 3:36
  SPEAKER_00: Aaron Powell So the lawyer who you know drafts my day-to-day supplier contracts isn't equipped for a buyer's legal team.
• 3:44
  SPEAKER_00: But w what are the actual mechanical differences?
• 3:47
  SPEAKER_00: Like what is an MA lawyer fighting over that my regular lawyer wouldn't even recognize?
• 3:52
  SPEAKER_01: Aaron Powell Well, a sale transaction introduces highly specific risk allocation mechanisms.
• 3:57
  SPEAKER_01: Let's look at two standard clauses: the indemnification cap and the survival period.
• 4:02
  SPEAKER_01: Okay.
• 4:03
  SPEAKER_01: A general corporate lawyer might gloss over these, you know, treating them as standard boilerplate text, but an MA lawyer knows these are the most critical lines in the entire purchase agreement.
• 4:12
  SPEAKER_00: Aaron Powell Let's define those, actually, because they sound like legal landmines.
• 4:15
  SPEAKER_00: What exactly is an indemnification cap and what's a survival period in this context?
• 4:20
  SPEAKER_01: Aaron Powell Yeah, good question.
• 4:21
  SPEAKER_01: So an indemnification cap is the absolute maximum financial limit you as the seller are liable for if something goes wrong after the sale.
• 4:30
  SPEAKER_00: Oh, I see.
• 4:30
  SPEAKER_01: Let's say a year after you sell, a massive environmental liability pops up from before the closing date.
• 4:37
  SPEAKER_01: The cap dictates whether you're on the hook for, say, 10% of the purchase price or the entire thing.
• 4:43
  SPEAKER_00: Ouch.
• 4:44
  SPEAKER_00: Okay.
• 4:45
  SPEAKER_00: And the survival period?
• 4:46
  SPEAKER_01: The survival period is the strict time limit the buyer has to actually make a claim against you.
• 4:52
  SPEAKER_01: Is it 12 months?
• 4:53
  SPEAKER_01: Is it 18 months?
• 4:55
  SPEAKER_01: Three years.
• 4:56
  SPEAKER_00: Wait, so if your generalist lawyer just agrees to a three-year survival period with no cap, you could be sitting on a beach three years from now and suddenly have to give the buyer millions of dollars back out of your own pocket.
• 5:07
  SPEAKER_01: Precisely.
• 5:08
  SPEAKER_01: And the thing is, generalist lawyers often do not know the current market standards for these thresholds.
• 5:14
  SPEAKER_01: If your team is learning the standard M and A market terms on the job, well, they're learning at your expense.
• 5:19
  SPEAKER_01: Right.
• 5:20
  SPEAKER_01: That tuition cost is often measured in hundreds of thousands of dollars in lost leverage.
• 5:24
  SPEAKER_00: That definitely puts it into perspective.
• 5:26
  SPEAKER_00: We're playing water polo, we need water polo players.
• 5:30
  SPEAKER_00: But looking at the source material, the very first specialist you're supposed to hire it completely threw me, an executive coach or a licensed therapist.
• 5:39
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 5:40
  SPEAKER_00: I read that and honestly thought, it must be a typo.
• 5:44
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, we're negotiating a multi-million dollar corporate buyout, not sitting on a couch analyzing our childhoods.
• 5:51
  SPEAKER_00: Why on earth is a therapist the very first hire?
• 5:55
  SPEAKER_01: Because selling a business is rarely a pure financial calculation.
• 5:59
  SPEAKER_01: For a founder, it is an identity transaction.
• 6:02
  SPEAKER_00: An identity transaction.
• 6:03
  SPEAKER_01: Exactly.
• 6:04
  SPEAKER_01: For decades, you have been the ultimate decision maker, right?
• 6:06
  SPEAKER_01: You sign the checks, you take the hard phone calls, you are the boss.
• 6:10
  SPEAKER_01: The day after that deal closes, that structural role completely vanishes.
• 6:14
  SPEAKER_00: Aaron Powell, you essentially lose your professional relevance overnight.
• 6:17
  SPEAKER_00: It reminds me of um elite athletes retiring.
• 6:20
  SPEAKER_00: Like the daily structure that defined their entire self-worth just evaporates.
• 6:25
  SPEAKER_01: That's a great comparison.
• 6:26
  SPEAKER_01: And if an owner hasn't untangled their personal identity from their corporate identity, they will inadvertently self-sabotage the deal.
• 6:32
  SPEAKER_00: Really?
• 6:33
  SPEAKER_00: How so?
• 6:34
  SPEAKER_01: Well, the executive coach steps in early to pressure test the owner's why.
• 6:38
  SPEAKER_01: Consider a scenario where an owner has a brutal fourth quarter, sales are down, a key executive quits, they are completely burned out.
• 6:47
  SPEAKER_00: Just total done with it.
• 6:48
  SPEAKER_01: Right.
• 6:49
  SPEAKER_01: They wake up in January and declare, I am selling this company immediately.
• 6:53
  SPEAKER_00: Which is a rash decision driven by exhaustion, not a strategic move to maximize valuation.
• 7:00
  SPEAKER_01: Exactly.
• 7:01
  SPEAKER_01: The coach surfaces that distinction.
• 7:03
  SPEAKER_01: They prevent the owner from launching a highly expensive, distracting MA process just because they need a vacation.
• 7:09
  SPEAKER_00: That's fascinating.
• 7:10
  SPEAKER_01: Furthermore, the coach prepares the owner for the psychological warfare of due diligence.
• 7:15
  SPEAKER_01: Buyers will pick apart your life's work line by line.
• 7:18
  SPEAKER_01: It feels incredibly invasive.
• 7:20
  SPEAKER_01: At the 11th hour, a buyer might attempt a retrade, you know, trying to drop the purchase price at the last second based on some minor detail they found.
• 7:27
  SPEAKER_00: Oh man.
• 7:27
  SPEAKER_00: If someone attacks a business I built from scratch and then tries to lowball me at the last minute, I'm gonna get fiercely defensive.
• 7:34
  SPEAKER_00: I could easily see myself walking away from a perfectly good exit just out of pure pride and anger.
• 7:39
  SPEAKER_01: And it happens constantly.
• 7:41
  SPEAKER_01: The executive coach builds the emotional resilience required to view a retrade as a business maneuver rather than a personal insult.
• 7:49
  SPEAKER_00: I see.
• 7:49
  SPEAKER_01: They also force you to build a concrete vision for your life after the sale.
• 7:54
  SPEAKER_01: An owner who knows exactly what they are doing on Monday morning, whether it's managing a family office or starting a foundation, they negotiate from a position of absolute strength.
• 8:03
  SPEAKER_00: That makes a lot of sense.
• 8:04
  SPEAKER_00: Okay.
• 8:04
  SPEAKER_00: So, okay, we have our psychological house in order.
• 8:07
  SPEAKER_00: We know our why.
• 8:09
  SPEAKER_00: How do we actually drive the valuation up and protect ourselves from predatory buyers?
• 8:14
  SPEAKER_01: This is where you bring in the process runners.
• 8:16
  SPEAKER_01: The MA advisor, often called an investment banker, and the specialized MA lawyer.
• 8:21
  SPEAKER_01: The MA advisor's core function is to manufacture competitive tension.
• 8:26
  SPEAKER_00: Competitive tension, meaning pitting buyers against each other.
• 8:29
  SPEAKER_01: Exactly.
• 8:30
  SPEAKER_01: One single buyer looking at your business dictates all the terms, but three or four qualified, well-funded buyers running in parallel on a strictly managed timeline.
• 8:38
  SPEAKER_01: That dynamic forces the price upward.
• 8:41
  SPEAKER_00: And the data in the source material backs that up aggressively.
• 8:45
  SPEAKER_00: Like there was a peer-reviewed study of over 1,500 private company acquisitions.
• 8:50
  SPEAKER_00: It showed sellers who hired an MA advisor received acquisition premiums 6 to 25% higher than those who tried to navigate it themselves.
• 9:01
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, and separate research by Northern Trust Business Advisory Services reinforces this, showing sellers using an investment banker achieved an EBITDA multiple, roughly 1.5 turns higher.
• 9:13
  SPEAKER_00: Wow.
• 9:13
  SPEAKER_00: There's also a massive behavioral component to having an advisor, which kind of comes down to the idea that proximity is leverage.
• 9:20
  SPEAKER_00: Right.
• 9:21
  SPEAKER_00: Like picture an owner who is exhausted from running the business all day.
• 9:24
  SPEAKER_00: It's 9 p.m.
• 9:25
  SPEAKER_00: and they're personally answering aggressive emails from a buyer's legal team trying to negotiate line items on a contract.
• 9:32
  SPEAKER_00: Because the owner is emotionally invested and fatigued, they were going to concede ground just to make the headache go away.
• 9:38
  SPEAKER_01: Yes.
• 9:38
  SPEAKER_00: The advisor acts as a crucial shield, right?
• 9:40
  SPEAKER_00: The buyer has to negotiate through the professional who isn't emotionally compromised.
• 9:45
  SPEAKER_01: A perfect illustration of their value.
• 9:47
  SPEAKER_01: And working right alongside that advisor is your MA lawyer.
• 9:51
  SPEAKER_01: We already discussed the risk allocation aspect, you know, the caps and survival periods.
• 9:56
  SPEAKER_01: But the other critical factor a specialized MA lawyer brings is sheer speed.
• 10:01
  SPEAKER_01: The text highlights a major red flag.
• 10:04
  SPEAKER_01: Lawyers who slow walk documents.
• 10:06
  SPEAKER_00: Because time kills all deals.
• 10:08
  SPEAKER_01: It really does.
• 10:09
  SPEAKER_00: If a lawyer takes two weeks to turn around a red line revision that should have taken two days, the buyer loses momentum.
• 10:15
  SPEAKER_00: They get distracted by another acquisition or the macroeconomic conditions shift, and suddenly the deal evaporates.
• 10:21
  SPEAKER_01: Exactly.
• 10:21
  SPEAKER_01: The MA lawyer must balance microscopic thoroughness with aggressive momentum.
• 10:26
  SPEAKER_00: So the advisor secures the high price and the lawyer locks down the terms.
• 10:31
  SPEAKER_00: But and this is a big but getting a high valuation on paper is basically meaningless if you end up surrendering half of it to the government or losing it because the buyers' accountants find discrepancies in your books during due diligence.
• 10:42
  SPEAKER_01: Oh, absolutely.
• 10:43
  SPEAKER_00: Which brings us to the moneymakers and this critical 24-month ticking clock.
• 10:48
  SPEAKER_01: Yes.
• 10:48
  SPEAKER_01: You need a transaction tax accountant and a quality of earnings or Q of ECPA.
• 10:54
  SPEAKER_01: Let's tackle the tax side first, because navigating the Canadian tax code correctly can yield a life-changing amount of capital.
• 11:01
  SPEAKER_00: We really need to talk about the lifetime capital gains exemption, the LCGE.
• 11:06
  SPEAKER_00: Because this sounds like an absolute magic wand if a business owner uses it correctly.
• 11:11
  SPEAKER_00: Can you break down the mechanics of how this actually shelters wealth?
• 11:14
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, the LCGE is arguably the most powerful tax mechanism available to Canadian business owners.
• 11:20
  SPEAKER_01: Currently, it allows an individual to shelter roughly$1.25 million of capital gains from taxation.
• 11:27
  SPEAKER_00: Aaron Powell But the strategy gets really interesting when we talk about family businesses, right?
• 11:31
  SPEAKER_00: Like if I have a corporate structure involving a family trust and I allocate shares to my spouse and my three adult children, we aren't just shielding$1.25 million.
• 11:40
  SPEAKER_01: No, you're not.
• 11:41
  SPEAKER_00: By multiplying that exemption across five shareholders, we are legally shielding over six million dollars from capital gains tax.
• 11:47
  SPEAKER_01: Aaron Powell That is the exact mechanism.
• 11:49
  SPEAKER_01: You are multiplying the shelter.
• 11:52
  SPEAKER_01: But, and there's a massive structural catch here, the exemption is not applied automatically just because you own a business.
• 11:59
  SPEAKER_01: The shares you are selling must qualify as qualified small business corporation shares or QSBC shares.
• 12:06
  SPEAKER_00: Aaron Powell And I'm guessing the government doesn't just hand that designation out.
• 12:11
  SPEAKER_00: What are the specific hurdles to actually qualify?
• 12:14
  SPEAKER_01: Aaron Powell There are strict asset and holding tests.
• 12:17
  SPEAKER_01: At the exact moment of the sale, at least 90% of the fair market value of your corporation's assets must be actively used in a business in Canada.
• 12:26
  SPEAKER_01: Furthermore, 50% of the assets must have been used in that active business continuously for the 24 months preceding the sale.
• 12:33
  SPEAKER_01: And those shares must have been held by you or a related party continuously for that same 24 month period.
• 12:39
  SPEAKER_00: Let me stop you right there to run a scenario.
• 12:40
  SPEAKER_00: Let's say I decide today I want to sell.
• 12:42
  SPEAKER_00: I have a buyer lined up, I call my regular year-end tax accountant three weeks before I sign the letter of intent.
• 12:48
  SPEAKER_00: What happens to my multi-million dollar tax shelter?
• 12:51
  SPEAKER_01: If your current corporate structure and balance sheet do not already meet those precise 24-month tests, the shelter is gone.
• 12:58
  SPEAKER_00: Gone.
• 12:59
  SPEAKER_01: Completely gone.
• 13:00
  SPEAKER_01: You cannot retroactively restructure your assets three weeks before closing.
• 13:05
  SPEAKER_01: You will pay the full capital gains tax on the entire amount.
• 13:09
  SPEAKER_01: This is why the 24-month clock is vital.
• 13:11
  SPEAKER_00: I see.
• 13:12
  SPEAKER_01: If you engage a specialized transaction tax accountant two years before going to market, they can execute a corporate reorganization, purify your balance sheet of passive assets, and start that 24-month clock ticking so you qualify on the actual day of the sale.
• 13:26
  SPEAKER_00: So the cost of procrastination is literally millions of dollars in unnecessary taxes.
• 13:31
  SPEAKER_00: That is terrifying.
• 13:33
  SPEAKER_00: Okay, so that covers the tax specialist.
• 13:35
  SPEAKER_00: Now let's talk about the quality of earnings CPA.
• 13:38
  SPEAKER_00: I already have audited financials from my regular accountant.
• 13:42
  SPEAKER_00: Why do I need a Q of E report?
• 13:44
  SPEAKER_01: Well, an audit simply verifies that your financials follow accounting rules.
• 13:47
  SPEAKER_01: A quality of earnings report is fundamentally different.
• 13:50
  SPEAKER_01: It is a deep, highly specialized, clean of your historical financials designed to show a buyer the true sustainable cash flow capacity of the business.
• 14:05
  SPEAKER_00: Earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation, and amortization.
• 14:08
  SPEAKER_01: Yes.
• 14:09
  SPEAKER_00: Buyers use EBITDA as a proxy for pure operational cash flow, and they multiply that number to determine your purchase price.
• 14:17
  SPEAKER_00: So how does the Q of E accountant legally adjust or normalize that EBITDA number?
• 14:22
  SPEAKER_01: They systematically strip out expenses that artificially depress your true earnings.
• 14:27
  SPEAKER_01: For example, owner benefit expenses.
• 14:29
  SPEAKER_01: Like white.
• 14:30
  SPEAKER_01: If you run your family's cell phone plans, uh a vehicle lease, or a country club membership through the business, the Q of E accountant adds those expenses back to the bottom line.
• 14:40
  SPEAKER_00: Oh, nice.
• 14:41
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 14:42
  SPEAKER_01: They also adjust for one-time anomalies, like a massive legal settlement you paid two years ago that will never happen again, or a temporary spike in raw material costs.
• 14:50
  SPEAKER_00: So by doing a sell-side Q of E before going to market, the owner controls the financial narrative.
• 14:56
  SPEAKER_00: You present a highly defensible, normalized EBITDA figure backed by a specialized CPA.
• 15:02
  SPEAKER_00: If you don't do this, you're basically just waiting for the buyer's accountants to come in during due diligence and aggressively adjust the numbers downward to lower your purchase price.
• 15:11
  SPEAKER_01: Precisely.
• 15:11
  SPEAKER_01: And the data from GF data really illustrates the return on investment here.
• 15:15
  SPEAKER_01: Sellers who commission a pre-marketing sell site Q of E realize an average valuation lift of roughly 0.4 turns of EBITDA.
• 15:24
  SPEAKER_00: 0.4 turns.
• 15:26
  SPEAKER_00: So if a buyer is paying a multiple of six times your EBITDA, and this report pushes that multiple to six point four, I mean that fraction of a turn easily translates to hundreds of thousands or even millions of dollars in added value.
• 15:39
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, it pays for the CPA's fee ten times over.
• 15:41
  SPEAKER_00: Easily.
• 15:42
  SPEAKER_00: And the text notes, you should engage them at least six months before going to market.
• 15:46
  SPEAKER_01: Which brings us to the final phase.
• 15:48
  SPEAKER_01: You survive due diligence, you structured the shares for the LCGE, and the deal finally closes.
• 15:54
  SPEAKER_01: The morning after closing, your reality is entirely different.
• 15:57
  SPEAKER_01: You are no longer asset rich and cash poor, you are highly cash liquid.
• 16:02
  SPEAKER_00: Which necessitates the final team member, the wealth advisor.
• 16:06
  SPEAKER_00: But the catch here is that you can't wait until the check clears to hire them, right?
• 16:10
  SPEAKER_01: No, not at all.
• 16:10
  SPEAKER_01: They must be engaged well before closing.
• 16:13
  SPEAKER_01: Advanced post-exit planning involves mechanisms like individual pension plans, executing estate freezes, or even establishing philanthropic foundations.
• 16:22
  SPEAKER_01: Right.
• 16:22
  SPEAKER_01: Some of these structures require capital to flow in very specific ways at the exact moment of the transaction.
• 16:28
  SPEAKER_01: If the money hits your personal checking account first, you may have already triggered massive tax liabilities that a wealth advisor could have easily bypassed.
• 16:36
  SPEAKER_00: Okay, so let's recap.
• 16:37
  SPEAKER_00: Our ideal specialized advisory team consists of an executive coach, an MA advisor, an MA lawyer, a transaction tax accountant, a Q of E CPA, and a wealth advisor.
• 16:48
  SPEAKER_01: Yep, that's the dream team.
• 16:50
  SPEAKER_00: That is a formidable group.
• 16:51
  SPEAKER_00: But practically speaking, how do I actually assemble them?
• 16:54
  SPEAKER_00: I can't just search Canadian MA expert online and hope for the best, can I?
• 16:59
  SPEAKER_01: No, you really can't.
• 17:00
  SPEAKER_01: If you rely on search engines, you will encounter brilliant marketing from firms that just lack the transaction volume you require.
• 17:07
  SPEAKER_01: And this highlights a crucial reality about the Canadian market.
• 17:11
  SPEAKER_01: The pool of true specialists is shockingly small.
• 17:15
  SPEAKER_00: Aaron Powell How small are we talking?
• 17:17
  SPEAKER_01: Well, out of roughly 1.1 million employer businesses in Canada, only about 1.5%, which is roughly 16,953 companies, are considered medium-sized, doing between 5 million and 50 million in revenue.
• 17:31
  SPEAKER_00: That is a tiny fraction of the overall business landscape.
• 17:33
  SPEAKER_01: Aaron Powell And the transaction data narrows it even further.
• 17:36
  SPEAKER_01: In 2023, across the entire country, there were only about 1,606 MA transactions completed in total.
• 17:43
  SPEAKER_01: In the true lower middle market, we only see about 1,150 to 1,200 deals happening annually.
• 17:49
  SPEAKER_00: Wow.
• 17:50
  SPEAKER_00: Let's do the math on that.
• 17:51
  SPEAKER_00: If there are only 1,150 deals spread across every province, every industry, and every advisory firm in the country, a good local advisor might only close two or three deals in your specific revenue band a year.
• 18:04
  SPEAKER_01: Exactly.
• 18:05
  SPEAKER_00: My local generalist accountant is absolutely not doing this every day.
• 18:09
  SPEAKER_01: Which is why your interview process for these advisors must be absolutely ruthless.
• 18:14
  SPEAKER_01: First, you have to demand comparable transactions.
• 18:17
  SPEAKER_01: Ask them to prove they have closed deals in your specific revenue band in your specific sector within the last three to five years.
• 18:24
  SPEAKER_00: And you really need to know who is actually executing the work, too.
• 18:27
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 18:28
  SPEAKER_00: It is so common in large firms for a charismatic senior partner to pitch you the business, but the moment you sign the engagement letter, a junior associate takes over your file.
• 18:37
  SPEAKER_00: Yes.
• 18:37
  SPEAKER_00: You need to verify who is picking up the phone on a Sunday night when the buyer threatens to walk away.
• 18:43
  SPEAKER_01: Right.
• 18:43
  SPEAKER_01: And arguably the most revealing question you can ask any potential advisor is to describe a deal that went completely sideways.
• 18:49
  SPEAKER_00: Oh, I like that.
• 18:50
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 18:51
  SPEAKER_01: Every experienced MA professional has scars.
• 18:54
  SPEAKER_01: They have deals that fell apart in due diligence or closed on terrible terms.
• 18:59
  SPEAKER_01: If an advisor sits across from you and only recites glorious success stories, they either lack a meaningful track record or they are intentionally hiding their failures.
• 19:08
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, you need to understand how they navigate chaos, because your deal will inevitably experience some chaos.
• 19:14
  SPEAKER_01: Absolutely.
• 19:15
  SPEAKER_00: Well, this entire deep dive completely reshapes how an owner should view a sale.
• 19:19
  SPEAKER_00: I think the core takeaway here is crystal clear.
• 19:22
  SPEAKER_00: The business owners who secure the highest valuations and the best terms aren't necessarily the ones who built the flawless businesses.
• 19:29
  SPEAKER_00: They are the ones who respected the complexity of the MA environment, started preparing 24 months in advance, and brought battle-tested specialists into the room to advocate for them.
• 19:38
  SPEAKER_01: Could not have said it better.
• 19:40
  SPEAKER_01: The advisory fees are not a sunk cost.
• 19:42
  SPEAKER_01: They are literally the price of admission to ensure you are not outmaneuvered by professional buyers.
• 19:48
  SPEAKER_01: But, you know, I want to leave you with a broader thought to consider.
• 19:51
  SPEAKER_01: Sure, go ahead.
• 19:52
  SPEAKER_01: We are facing a demographic wave where 76% of business owners plan to exit, transferring$2 trillion in wealth.
• 20:00
  SPEAKER_01: What happens to the broader Canadian economy when$2 trillion shifts out of active, productive private businesses and into passive liquid investment portfolios?
• 20:10
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, the macroeconomic implications of this wealth transfer are going to reshape our financial landscape for decades.
• 20:17
  SPEAKER_00: That is a fascinating dynamic to watch unfold.
• 20:19
  SPEAKER_00: We'll definitely have to keep an eye on that.
• 20:21
  SPEAKER_00: A huge thank you to Shaughnessy Group for providing the insights that fueled today's conversation.
• 20:25
  SPEAKER_00: For more incredible resources on maximizing your business's value, you need to visit their website at shotnessy.group.
• 20:32
  SPEAKER_00: Thank you for listening.