Looking for biz sellers experiences / advice please
So I am getting to the point where I want to look into selling my business that I’ve built over the last 20 years. The biggest hurdle is that I am an owner operator and do a lot in the day-to-day and have a real hard time with finding good talent. For reference we do between 5-6m/yr and my net is 20-25% plus after expenses, we are a b2b company in a mid-market area. So obviously I run lean mean. Everyone always says just hire a general manager, I’ve been looking for the last 10 years and no one is the right fit! It’s not that easy. I don’t know why people act like it is. Anyway, the point of my post is I’ve been contacted by a couple brokers, they all seem to want to start with some of the local/regional competitors and the bizbuysell route. I am super paranoid that as soon as they contact one of my competitors word will get out immediately, also I am worried that the competitors will start a dialogue just to get market research, that’s already happened to me by a strategic buyer who approached me, they said it was a great deal and six months later just ghosted. In my years in this business I’ve seen when other competitors have tried to sell, people in our industry seem to know immediately. The NDA‘s aren’t worth anything as I think we all know. People talk. I’d really like to get some feedback from someone who sold their business either to a local competitor or had some knowledge/expertise to share in this specific area. Thanks!