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Episode 21: The CFO’s Crucial Role in Selling Your Business ft. Gabrielle Juliano-Villani

April 10, 2023

Episode 21: The CFO’s Crucial Role in Selling Your Business ft. Gabrielle Juliano-Villani

“That might be something that a lot of business owners don’t realize when they’re going into these conversations. I’ve seen both sides of this.

First, is that they’re just so excited that somebody’s interested in purchasing their company, that they’ll just say yes to just about anything.

Second, that I’ve seen is that there’s like an emotional tie to the business that they maybe didn’t even recognize was there.”

Andrea Jenson

Welcome to a brand new episode of the Cash Flow CFO Podcast. Joining me today is Gabrielle Juliano-Villani. Based in Sarasota, Florida, she works as a consultant, coach, entrepreneur, and educator. She has more than ten years of experience in the mental health area and focuses on stress, chronic medical problems, and trauma. In 2021, when she became aware of her burnout, she sold her successful group therapy practice and set out on a mission to inform other company owners about the negative effects stress has on our daily lives.

One of the things we’ll cover is the five things you can do to set your business up to be acquired. Companies that effectively plan almost invariably end up with the highest sales valuations. Even if a company is not ultimately purchased, preparing for a sale can increase its worth.

In this episode, Gabrielle shares the discussions she had with the buyer when they inquired about purchasing the company as well as the things she would do differently if she were to sell her company again.

Join us to learn the whole story!

“Even if you never want to sell or you think you don’t, you should always act as if you want to, because that is really what’s going to make your practice or your business more profitable.

If you’re always thinking in the back of your head like, should I do this or should I not do this? And you’re thinking like, would somebody want to buy my business if I just bought some piece of machinery that costs $800,000? That might make you pause for a second. And so, I always encourage people to do that and that would’ve helped me too because there are things I could have done differently and maybe documented a little bit better.”

Gabrielle Juliano-Villani

The CFO’s Crucial Role in Selling Your Business

The selling of their business, for many business owners, is the culmination of years of labor and is likely to be the biggest and most significant transaction of their lives. It is crucial to negotiate the best price and ensure that the sale is carried out smoothly because there is a lot of money on the line, including maybe the founder’s retirement security.

According to Andrea, a number of their clients approach them and express a desire to close their businesses or sell them. So, Andrea’s team sets everything up and gets everything in place. Andrea believes it would have been wonderful if Gabrielle had an experienced CFO at her side back then who could have held her hand and guided her during the selling process.

“We’ve had several of our clients come to us and say,

“My goal is I want to exit.”

And we’re like,

“Awesome! Let’s do it!”

So, we work backward and get all the things in place and everything set up. And I will say, in hearing your story [Gabrielle’s], what would’ve been amazing for you is having a CFO next to you that has been through it and can hold your hand and say,

“Okay, here’s what’s going to come next, and then they’re going to ask for this. Let’s get all this stuff together and things like that.”