Tree Surgery Business Sale

[daveatdave]

it is difficult selling a business when most of the income is from good will and no contracts and this is from experience in retiring my accountant says it is worth x£ then you try and find buyers then they turn round and say I can advertise in your area and pick your customers up for nothing 

[Warners]

I've seen these type of thing before.. Goodwill doesn't count for much... Signed contracts do.. 

 

Sell the assets for as much as you can... maybe as a job lot if you want a quick sale.. Your client list might mean that your job lot of kit will be more attractive.. however I purchased a small gardening firm years ago and most of the clients weren't interested.. So the value for me was in the kit.

 

Good luck with your move.. 

[Ty Korrigan]

I wish to know the secret of making a 40k profit from a 70k turnover...

   Ty

[Graham]

As mentioned before....there's no value in goodwill.  The goodwill leaves as soon as you do.  I sold a tree business but that came with confirmed LA work plus the kit.   The value of the business is yourself.  Better to sell the kit and walk away.

[dan494]

32 minutes ago, Ty Korrigan said:

I wish to know the secret of making a 40k profit from a 70k turnover...

   Ty

I'd imagine that's wage drawn, not profits??

[skyhuck]

5 minutes ago, dan494 said:

I'd imagine that's wage drawn, not profits??

If your a sole trader its pretty much the same thing.

[dan494]

My understanding of buying a business is profits is what you are left with after you would pay yourself, or a manager to run it for you, market value. Otherwise all you're really doing is paying out to have a job, profits would be zero and the business therefor worthless. In this case it's 36k to have a job where the last guy earned 40k. Poor investment unless the tools are worth that much

Edited August 8, 2017 by dan494

[Gardenscape]

I got to agree with what has already been said. Also those figures just don't stack up for me. 40k profit on 70k seems very unrealistic to me. Any business like this, especially if you are working alone and are the face of the business, you are the business. People buy into you. Sell all your equipment and forget about the rest.

[Warners]

40K profit is very possible on 70K... If you're working mostly on your own then your overheads, insurance/fuel/repairs, etc are low.. A long time ago I easily managed over 40K profit on 80K turnover running a gardening business as a sole trader. 

[surveyor]

For what it's worth,  I bought a survey business, albeit not for this much cash, but also inherited the vehicle payments and the major instrument payments, and it was very valuable to inherit the phone number particularly.  It enabled me to have a steady flow of work from the get go. This enabled me to pay off all my debts associated with the business after about a year.  Of course I bought the business from the owner, who had been my boss. 

Edited August 9, 2017 by surveyor
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