🧵10 Steps to Prep Your Business for Sale

As a “recovering” investment banker and advisor to a private equity firm, I have advised on both sides of sales processes and seen mistakes made that lead to value leakage from deals.

Here are 10 steps to take now to prep for a sale... 1-List and Prioritize Shareholder Objectives—For many small business owners, price isn’t the only consideration. Employees, brand and other factors can play a role.

🧵A few points re: Trump’s tariffs/negotiations

1-Prolonged negotiation could tank holiday season/Q4
2-Focused/surgical approach to ongoing tariffs would be well received
3-Carrot vs. stick
4-Harsh attacks are easier when there’s an ability to make an imminent switch
(cont) Prolonged negotiation could tank holiday season/Q4

Many consumer products companies and retailers make or break their business in Q4, during holiday season. However, the groundwork for that is being laid right now.

Production is happening, orders are being made to factories and those products will be on the water within the next couple of months. Not getting to a quick resolution could create a massive drag on the most important time of the year, severely impacting the broader economy.

The Trump administration should want to be viewed as Santa, not the Grinch.

Property rights are natural rights, and intellectual property is as much property as something physical.

Nobody else should be able to copy my books and profit from them.

Nobody else should be able to take a brand name or logo and put it on clothing.

And so on.

https://twitter.com/jack/status/1910829254214115681

This is exactly the bs you would imagine from tech billionaires that made their money off others’ work.

This is a big deal for small business re the CTA BOI rule- read the whole thread. Thank you @SecScottBessent and @USTreasury !

https://twitter.com/USTreasury/status/1896348155522039985

If I am reading correctly, this means no egregious enforcement fines for US small biz (and HOAs) and the scope will be narrowed to foreign reporting companies only. I’m doing more research, but this seems very good…

Key stats you need to know about the backbone of the economy, small business.

This is sourced from mid-2024 SBA stats, although they use stats in some cases that go back several years... There are almost 34.8 million small businesses in the US vs. 19,688 large businesses (small biz = 99% of all business entities)

The small biz entity number has gone up and the large biz number down over the last several years

Scott Bessent is a very solid pick for Treasury Secretary. I know there are many questions about him, so here is a short thread.

Note that I do not know him personally, only via media and anecdotal knowledge. Our fiscal foundation is a mess, which makes the Treasury pick incredibly important. Bessent has a very broad, relevant skill set with the understanding required for a position like Treasury, having worked on Wall Street and with central banks, and understanding a broad range of interconnected economic and financial metrics.

He currently manages a macro-focused hedge fund, Key Square, and is probably most well known for the company he has kept.

Why is it that Americans are so uninformed about how much in taxes the wealthiest Americans pay?

The reason is that the White House straight up lied about it and the media has been saturated with this lie.

Let’s take a look (thread)... Joe Biden has repeatedly claimed that the wealthiest pay only an 8% average tax rate, comparing it to working class tax rates.

That seems insane, so I investigated.

Here’s a thread on the CTA BOI rule I spoke about today w @GlennBeck as requested... If you are a small biz with an entity around it (LLC, S-corp, etc) considered a reporting company (more on that below) you are now required to report beneficial ownership information to the Financial Crimes Enforcement Network (FinCEN), a division of the US Treasury

Long/Important thread on Natural Asset Companies:

Natural Asset Companies are worse than ESG on steroids-- imagine Wall Street or even foreign countries having control over our food, energy and water A new type of company called a Natural Asset Company (NAC) is pushing for control of America’s natural resources. The NYSE is currently trying to get the SEC to approve it and unleash it on public investors.

Your urgent help is needed to comment and spread the word.

Thread/
In March 2020, the Fed and the govt decided they needed to “save the economy” from the govt-mandated economy shutdowns.
The Fed propped up Wall Street.
The govt paid people not to work and other direct stimulus... With small biz closed, big biz open and easy $ for Wall St, this allowed the shutdowns to go on for much longer than they would have...

Thread/
The Biden Administration blowing up ERISA protections is unconscionable.
For nearly 50 years, ERISA has protected the retirement assets of Americans, requiring that plan sponsors act solely in the interest of employees/ dependents/beneficiaries... ...when picking investments, monitoring them or casting shareholder votes.
The Biden DOL now let’s them prioritize ESG instead of your financial well-being...

PPP is not the same as student loans, you lunatics—a thread.

Most of us agree that the govt shutting down large swaths of the economy was a horrible, destructive decision that has had massive repercussions... That being said, FORCING biz to close for the “public good” is a violation of property rights that requires compensation.
That is what PPP was supposed to be.
Compensating people for that is not the same as forgiving a personal loan. To conflate that is ignorant + dishonest.

Thread-
The latest leftist lie is that oil production is higher under Biden than Trump.

Let me show you what they are doing so you can explain it.

Their chart on the left; the one from the US Energy Information Administration on the right
eia.gov/dnav/pet/hist/… Even if you aren’t great with charts, you can clearly see that the nearly 13 million barrels of oil per day we were producing in late 2019 and early 2020 is higher than the 11.655 million barrels at the "today" part of the chart (March 2022) and the numbers in their chart

Important thread: MISINFORMATION and LIES

How does Twitter allow this tweet to stay up given their misinformation policy?

This is not only misleading, it is an intentional, egregious, bald-faced lie.

Read the thread for the breakdown.

https://twitter.com/POTUS/status/1536763927865991169

I saw this above tweet and went 8%?!
How do I get in on this sweet tax rate?
So, I went to the White House site + looked at their “study”
It was not based on tax records or even income (which is what is tax rates are based on).
The study said they included UNSOLD STOCK...

We are 100% in the position we are now because too many people believed you could suck the rainbow farts out of unicorns’ asses instead of reality. If you thought you could turn on and off the economy like you were power-cycling a modem without massive issues...

Get a reality check or STFU forever.

Thread about speech in the digital age—
What’s the path to redemption for unpopular opinions and bad actions?
Who decides?
How are rules ensured to be enforced consistently?
(contd) Consider this: when someone breaks a law, they are innocent until proven guilty. They have a trial and if found guilty, are given a sentence.

They fulfill that sentence- or get off early for good behavior- and their "debt" has been paid.

I am sick of the politicization of everything and infuriated by those who continually do such, their lack of awareness when it is inconvenient "for their side" + utter hypocrisy. The latest is the vaccines-some examples of the flip-flops purely based on politics... About half-way through, the "informing" of everyone how long other vaccines took and not to fall for it...

https://twitter.com/TheView/status/1303757638702895106?s=20

Thread/
I’ve written in detail about the biggest, most ignored story-govt enabling the hugest wealth transfer in history from Main Street to Wall Street, enabled by govt deciding who would thrive and who would fight to survive, aided by the Fed, and corporate media won't cover it For my book, as of today, I am scheduled for exactly zero morning TV programs + zero prime time shows on network or cable. None of the major newspaper outlets are reviewing or excerpting the book. We had one agree...

Thread
When you stop to get a shoe shine, do you ask the person how many customers they have had that day and how much they need to live on, or do you ask for the price? When you buy a loaf of bread from a vendor at a fair, do you ask the person how many customers they have had that day? Do you not care that they may not make a “living wage” that day? Are you not personally obligated by taking their output to ensure they can live? Of course not.

Thread/
Why do people not trust “experts”, the govt or the media?

Here’s a little bit on what happened around masks.

While some will say the science changed or the information changed, it did not. The politics changed (as admitted in the
thread)… First, studies back to 2007 recommended mask wearing as protocol for similar respiratory viruses. This was known by “experts”. ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/P…; acpjournals.org/doi/10.7326/00…; nytimes.com/2020/03/27/hea…

Board diversity thread re @Nasdaq’s diversity quota—

I have been a public company director; I’m currently a private company director and let me tell you why this is a horrible idea...

wsj.com/articles/nasda… First, is board diversity an issue. Yes. Boards in general are packed with cronies and people not willing to "go against the crowd".

Diversity is a good and important factor for corporate governance and otherwise, but quotas make me uncomfortable...