Ep487: Michelle Seiler Tucker – Do Your Due Diligence So You Can “Exit Rich”

Andrew Stotz 00:02
Hello fellow risk takers and welcome to my worst investment ever stories of loss to keep you winning. In our community. We know that to win in investing, you must take risk but to win big, you've got to reduce it, go to my worst investment ever.com and join our Facebook group to connect with our community of guests and fellow listeners. Fellow risk takers this is your worst podcast hose Andrew Stotz, from a Stotz Academy, and I'm here with featured guests. Michelle Siler Tucker, Michelle, are you ready to rock?

Michelle Seiler Tucker 00:34
I am ready to rock and roll. I absolutely.

Andrew Stotz 00:38
I can feel that really from the first moment that we just started talking just earlier. So I'm excited to bring your knowledge and your energy to the audience. So let me introduce you to the audience. Michelle Siler Tucker is the founder and CEO of Siler Tucker Incorporated. She owns many businesses in several different industries as a 20 year veteran in the m&a industry. She is regarded as the leading authority on buying, selling, fixing, and growing businesses. Her and her firm have sold over 1000 businesses in almost every vertical and have a remarkable track record of success. She is the business the best selling author of the book, sell your business for more than it's worth. And as a new book that's out now called Exit rich, a Wall Street Journal and us a today best seller Michelle, take a minute and Philly for the tidbits about your life.

Michelle Seiler Tucker 01:34
tidbits, I don't know you did a pretty good job. But I've always been an entrepreneur, even from a little girl. I've have many different businesses and different protocols. I did go to work for Xerox for a short period of time, they actually recruited me as a regional vice president over 100 salespeople. And I ended up transitioning out of Xerox and starting a franchise development franchise sales purchase consulting company. I was an equity partner with many different franchisors and I just had so many buyers that kept asking me for existing businesses to roll up in a current portfolio. So that's when I really decided to transition into m&a nearly over 20 years ago, I have personally sold over 500 businesses and pretty much every vertical, but my firm has sold over 1000 altogether.

Andrew Stotz 02:23
Um, you know, I want to serve our young audience. And by asking you like, what was it in the beginning of the of your career that kind of was some of the smart moves that you made, that you could advise a young person that's going into their career that they really should, you know, consider doing?

Michelle Seiler Tucker 02:40
I think, you know, first and foremost is always following my heart, follow my passion. I've always been passionate about people, I've always been a problem solver. I've always been solution oriented, I love to write, you know, I love entrepreneurship. And I would say just, you know, follow your passion, but also, you know, get advice from an expert. And I really didn't do that till much later on. I think it was like 2011, I had been in business for many years. And then in 2011, I started going to conferences, I started meeting experts. And I hired a mentor. And then I wrote my very first book in 2013. And I would say you know, get an expert early on, but not just any mentor, make sure you really do your due diligence. Make sure you really research it, make sure it's a mentor has been down the road, travel down the road you want to travel because shorten your learning curve dramatically and shorten your path to success dramatically.

Andrew Stotz 03:34
Why do you think that young people don't do it because I think about myself, I kind of didn't do it either. I don't think that I was just an arrogant kid that thought I could do it all. I just didn't really know it existed in some ways, you know that you could reach out to anybody and say, Can I Can I ask you some questions? Or is there a way that I could talk to you once a month and you know, whatever. I just never knew any of that existed.

Michelle Seiler Tucker 03:58
Yeah, and I you know, I didn't really know that either. So it wasn't until like I said, later when I was talking to other people and are like, Oh, I'm going to this meeting. I'm going to this conference and I remember dragging my husband to a real estate conference. And we ended up signing and paying all this money in for Robert Kiyosaki. Rich Dad Poor Dad, actually, his co author Sharon Lechter is my co author on exit rich and so we're going to Robert Kiyosaki his courses and we're sitting sitting in there, Mr. hustles like Oh, you'll be good at this you'll be great at this you'll be good at this. I go well, what are you going to do? He goes well, I'm gonna go to the courthouse I go I'm gonna count the money have businesses No, I have the money. already. I'm all these businesses. I don't need another job. And we're sitting there and we meet. We went to listen to a speaker that Robert Kiyosaki had actually invited to speak on campus there. And I'm like, Oh, I love what he has to say. I'm going to go to his conference. I'll run to the back of the room sign up for his conference. I've never done any of that before. And the next thing I know, I'm flying to California going to his conference. And then I meet somebody who says you need to write a book. And, you know, it really did change. It really did change my trajectory pretty quickly, because nobody knew who I was, like, I was the best kept secret. I've sold all these companies, but I'm selling private companies, so we can't really talk about it. So nobody really knew who I was. And you know, a lot of business owners don't really know, their business brokers and m&a advisors, investment bankers exist, you know. And so it really helps build credibility helps with exposure dramatically. And it really helped me build my business. So I will say to all the young people out there, don't wait, you know, go get a mentor, the more successful an entrepreneur is, the more time energy and money they have to invest in, you

Andrew Stotz 05:54
know, that's great advice. And one last thing, you know, you've written this book exit rich, I'm looking at it on Amazon, right? It's the six P method to sell your business for huge profit. The book came out in June of this year, so congratulations, and you've gotten 39 Right? ratings that are 4.9 out of five so fantastic on that. Why don't you

Michelle Seiler Tucker 06:17
Why don't you go make it 50 Yeah, exactly.

Andrew Stotz 06:22
Well, that's what we're gonna do right now. And I want to, I want you to tell the audience, what benefit did they get from getting this book because it's right, we'll add this link in the show notes. And you know what, I love books because you know, people took a leg a lot of time to put down on paper, something that's, you know, valuable, what is the key value that someone would get that really reason why they should download the book now?

Michelle Seiler Tucker 06:45
Yeah, so several things and one exit riches endorsed by Steve Forbes, that's pretty powerful. Steve Forbes says 80% of businesses on the market will never sell. Steve Forbes says that business owners are leaving a tremendous amount of money on the table when they go to sell their business. Sure, like there's my co author who wrote Rich Dad, Poor Dad with Robert Kiyosaki. She's a CPA financial literacy expert and advisor to many different presidents. Kevin Harrington wrote the foreword exit Rich is a step by step blueprint not just to sell your business. It's a step by step blueprint to build a sustainable business, that you can scale. And it will actually be sellable when you're ready, that you won't fall in that 80% statistics. So many businesses in America are not selling. Plus, the business landscape has changed in America drastically. When I wrote my very first book, sell your business for more than it's worth. In 2013, I did the research and learned that 90% of all startups will go out of business within the first one to five years. We all know that right? That's common knowledge. However, when I did the exact same research for exit Rich, I learned that the business landscape has flipped flopped. Startups are not at great risk anymore. Startups are highly successful right now. It's existing businesses that are at risk as existing businesses are going out of business. In America, there are 30 point 2 million businesses in United States employing over half the US workforce. out of 27 point 6 million companies. The businesses have been in business 10 years or longer. 70% of them will go out of business seven zero. Now we hear in the media all the time, about public companies, Toys R Us and business setting five years goes out of business. Stay Mart pure one, Disney Stores just closed out Godiva chocolates, closing 1500 locations, but what the media doesn't talk about all the private companies in America these business owners are extremely poor. They're selling for pennies on the dollar, they're closing their business or following bankruptcy, exit Rich is all about preventing these businesses from going out of business. So exit which talks about how to plan your exit from the beginning, like Stephen Covey says always start with the end in mind, it's about how to build your solid infrastructure using the six PS. And then the second half of the book is how to sell your business.

Andrew Stotz 09:09
Ladies and gentlemen, if you don't buy that, now, you're nuts, and I am downloading mine on Kindle as we speak. But the thing that I like about that is that you know, it's a so many people kind of getting caught in a trap of their own family business or their business idea. And you know, it's exciting to get it off the ground and it goes relatively well in the beginning. But in order to exit rich, you got to scale it and you talked about scalable and and all that. So I'm looking forward to going through it. So I appreciate that. And for the listeners out there, I'll have the link in the show notes. And for just one last thing for those people that want to follow you and you know, keep up with what you're doing. What's the best place for them to go to do that?

Michelle Seiler Tucker 09:51
Sure. So two things I want to say number one, online exit read if you're outside the United States, absolutely. go to Amazon. I have people for the last of the United States that try to come to our website and the shipping cost is just so expensive these days. So go to Amazon if you're inside the United States, obviously, you can go to Amazon, you can go to your favorite bookstore, but also encourage you to go to exit rich book.com instead, because that's where all the value is at exit Rich book.com. For $24.79, we will email you to digital version will ship the hardcover to your doorstep will give you a lifetime membership into the exit rich book club, where there's video content and me doing training on different strategies and techniques. I've been training for the last 20 years in the trenches to my clients, plus documents, Andrew documents to operate your business documents to sell your business. We have sample employee handbooks, policy and procedure manual sample letter of intent, purchase agreements, to diligence, checklist, closing docs, everything you need to operate and sell your company are there. And I can promise you, if you went to your attorney to recreate all this, it will cost you over $50,000 to do so. And then the other thing too is that we're giving you a free membership in a club CEOs, where we really help business owners build that, you know, sustainable, scalable, and when you're ready, sellable business. So that's the exit rich book.com If you do buy the book somewhere else, just email us marketing at cellar talker, just email marketing at Sandler Tucker and we'll still make sure you get those bonuses for free. As far as what can they follow us that was a great offer. And as far as following us, they can follow us on social media, Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, Twitter, and my main website is salad topper.com. Great.

Andrew Stotz 11:31
And I'll have the links to all that in the show notes, ladies and gentlemen. So go to the website or go to the show notes and get in touch. And now it's time to share your worst investment ever. And since no one goes into their worst investment thinking it will be tell us a bit about the circumstances leading up to it then tell us your story.

Michelle Seiler Tucker 11:49
Sure. So I've had a few bad investments. You know, some in businesses and some in and and vendors that I've hired, but I'll tell you one of my one of the worst ones. So remember, when I told you that I started going to conferences and networking, and I started really speaking on stage at all these different events. And one of the leaders of one of these organizations, I'm not going to say who ended up talking several of the attendees, we've been going to these conferences for a few years, talk several of us into investing into a business in Africa, in South Africa, and a technology company. And I was excited because you know, I was excited about Africa, I was excited about doing something unique, something different outside of the United States. And I like the people that we were going in with didn't necessarily trust, you know, the leader that was bringing this opportunity in front of us. And look, this person broke so many rules. You know, they didn't follow any of the you know, there's so many guidelines when you're trying to raise money, didn't follow any of those roles. And so a bunch of so we all got together, I got my husband involved, too, which was a big no, no. So my husband invested over, always supposed to say how much to invest? Yeah, sure. My husband invested over a quarter of a million I invested over a quarter million to two of us. And it was just a disaster. The leader ended up getting a fight in a big fight with the CEO of the company. He went his separate way. Apparently, he didn't get his money back. I don't know, you know if that's true. So we really fought for years to make something work or get our money back. And, you know, gosh, what was it now 567 years later, we still don't have our money back, and we probably will never see our money. So that was a big loss. And you know, my husband reminds me of this all the time. And then a very good friend of mine. That was also attending these events. I got him to get in and he invested over a quarter million. So I hear it from my husband, and I hear it from him. Oh, man. And so it was a terrible thing. We should never have done it.

Andrew Stotz 14:12
So tell me, what did you learn from it? What how would you summarize? Lessons?

Michelle Seiler Tucker 14:17
Yeah, so um, number one, you know, when somebody is trying to raise capital from the stage, make sure that they're doing it the right way. Make sure they're following all the rules with the SEC, if you're going to invest in a company outside of the United States, really, really, really do your due diligence and have some alliances in that country. I didn't really have any alliances in South Africa. I've never been there before. So really have some alliances, attorneys, you know, trust advisors that you can really go to that you can trust over there. We didn't really have those alliances, and every time we try to hire An attorney, we pay an attorney money, we lose the money. And we just kept spending more money to try to get our money back. So, you know, at this point, we're like, Okay, we're done. So the big lesson is, like I said, make sure that you're following the SEC rules, make sure that you have trusted advisors, make sure that you don't get caught up in the excitement of it.

Andrew Stotz 15:21
That's the question I had is like, how do you prevent that, because some people are really good at getting you excited. Yeah, and they

Michelle Seiler Tucker 15:29
were really good at getting me excited. And I'm, and I'm a pretty good checks and balance person, I'm pretty, you know, left brain, right brain, I'm pretty analytical, and I will review transactions. I mean, I review transactions every day on a daily basis, and our multiple companies, but they didn't get us all pumped up. And, you know, I wanted to do something different. And it was unique, and I wanted my husband to be involved. And I think you just have to, you just have to like, get you know, you have to separate yourself from everybody and really think about it. And really, you know, weigh the pros and the cons write down all the things that could happen, all the things, all the things that could go right, all the things that could go wrong. If it goes wrong, and you lose this money, how will it affect your life?

Andrew Stotz 16:15
Yep, you

Michelle Seiler Tucker 16:16
know, if you lose the money, and it's not really gonna affect you, then may you know, but I would really get away from everybody, write down the pros, write down the cons, and write down best case scenario, worst case scenario, can you live with the worst case scenario? Now I can live with the worst case scenario. You know, I would never do that again. And I will never bring my husband and age because I've had to pay the price. But you just got to really stay grounded and try not to get caught up in the emotions, always say never make decisions on emotion, always make decisions based on logic. Got

Andrew Stotz 16:55
it? Okay. And maybe I'll summarize a few things. I was taking notes while you were speaking. And I was just thinking, you know, it's already crazy investing outside of the US, you know, like, that's already hard. And I was thinking that, you know, if a person says, I really want to have more exposure outside of the US, you know, there's, there's ETFs, there's mutual funds, you know, there's ways to build that exposure. So my first thinking on it was kind of you know, that. But of course, that's not what you're into, when you're listening to a fantastic story, you're pretty excited. And maybe I'll just tell this story about myself, when when I came to Thailand, my best friend came to see me this is back in 1992, he came to see me and then by 1985, we had set up a coffee factory here in Thailand, by 1997, basically, so we were selling coffee to restaurants and coffee shops, and roasting coffee, and hotels and all that. And then by 1987, the whole thing imploded with the Asian crisis. And we had to move into our factory out in the boondocks, we were like, in the middle of a jungle, in a factory, in a room in a factory can't add condition the factory in the middle of a sweltering heat. So we just have one room we lived in for seven months trying to keep our business alive. And we just thought to ourselves, if we were talking, like, Could we have made it more hard on ourselves, you know, like, come to a foreign country, you know, set up a coffee business, they don't really drink coffee, you know, at that. And, you know, I just made me think that, you know, whenever you're investing your money, and when you're doing small businesses already already in startups and all that there's so much risk, you know, try not to bring additional risk on if you can, like, you know, whatever that is going to a foreign country or whatever. And then the last thing I would think I was thinking about is that, you know, one of the tools that I've learned and I've kind of developed from listening to people's stories, because I've identified six common mistakes that people make and number one of his of them that is really common amongst all is people fail to do their own research. And it's part of what you said is, you know, you got to step back from the emotion and sit down,

Michelle Seiler Tucker 19:02
you have to do your due diligence, there it is. And I didn't even know why I'm the due diligence queen, I do due diligence on everything. I didn't do due diligence on this because I get too caught up in the excitement. I got too caught up in my friends, you know, doing business with my friends out of out of the country, you know, what just got too caught up in emotions,

Andrew Stotz 19:23
which is most common mistake number three, the third most common mistake, which is called I call it driven by emotion or flawed thinking, and, you know, we get caught up. So one one thing I'll advise to the listeners that I would advise and, and that is to separate the research that you do on risk and return. And what I mean by that is that basically take a time to write down all the exciting things about this on a piece of paper, you know, draw a piece of draw a line down the middle piece of paper, and take one day and write down all the exciting things about the upside. And then a couple of days later, take that same paper out and then sit down and say What could go wrong. And by separating the discussion on risk and return, I found that it takes some of the emotion out where you're trying to defend the positive. And you know all of that. And by doing that, I've done that a lot with my business partner where one week we talk about the return of a particular project idea. And then in the other way, because we did survive our coffee business by living in the factory in 1997, but we basically do this, that it takes away a lot of the impassioned fighting and all that, and it allows us to look at the return and the risk separately. So that's kind of my thoughts from what I took away anything you'd add?

Michelle Seiler Tucker 20:36
No, I think, you know, like, Dr. Neato. Cobain is a very wise man. Not sure if you ever heard of him, but he's the president of High Point University. He is on the board of lazy boy, Great Harvest Bread Company and about 12 other companies. And he's like, What shall we always got to look at an investment? By asking ourselves, what, like I said earlier, was the best thing that can happen was the most likely thing that's that can happen. What's the worst case scenario that can happen? And if you can't live without worst case scenario, don't invest? Absolutely. 1,000% don't invest. Now. Fortunately, for me, I'm okay. And I, you know, always I don't always say I don't have any rearview mirror. I never looked backwards, always look forward. So I don't dwell on the fact that we lost money, because I know I can make more money. Other people? Was that

Andrew Stotz 21:36
good? Really knocked out some other people?

Michelle Seiler Tucker 21:39
Yeah. But I got people in my ears, you know, say I lost money. But you know, I didn't. Today, I always look at things. What had I learned from this? What am I not going to do again? And how do I move forward? But I think, you know, Dr. nidos, advice is spot on. Because if you've if the worst case scenario, if you can't live with the worst case scenario, which you might lose all your money, then absolutely 1,000% Do not make that investment.

Andrew Stotz 22:07
So based on what you learned from this, and what you continue to learn, what action would you recommend our listeners take to avoid suffering the same fate? I think we should really think about that listener who is being seduced by a powerful pitch. What advice would you give?

Michelle Seiler Tucker 22:27
Um, due diligence. Okay, due diligence, due diligence, and that's the thing that I didn't do. If I would have I, you know, I didn't do what I always do. If I would have done the due diligence, I would have never invested in this business.

Andrew Stotz 22:43
Perfect. So ladies and gentlemen, do your due diligence. And I would advise that you don't have to do some massive amount of research, at least start the process by asking a series of questions, you know. So last question, what's your number one goal for the next 12 months?

Michelle Seiler Tucker 23:00
Well, my number one goal was you know, I got extra job, thank goodness I will accident Rich was supposed to come out April 2020. And there was this little pandemic that came out in 2020. So we had to push it back to June 2021. So my number one you know, go for the next 12 months is really to do keep on doing what I've been doing, which is helping to save business owners from going out of business. You know, I partner with it. I do partner with business owners, so I don't just sell businesses I buy, sell, fix grow. So I actually partner with business owners investing my money, time energy effort, and I've had great success with that great success with that in the United States. So my goal is to really, you know, keep helping business owners save their business partner business owners, really put them on the road to riches road to exit rich, so they X original exit for and really help business owners retire rich. That's my goal over the next 12 months. I love what I do. I'm passionate about it. I can't see myself doing anything else.

Andrew Stotz 24:05
Well, that sounds exciting. And for the listeners out there, you know, let's all follow along, as Michelle does this and make sure you go to the show notes. We've got everything there for you to get listeners. There, you haven't another story of loss to keep you winning. Remember to go to my worst investment ever.com and join our Facebook group to connect with our community of guests and fellow listeners. As we conclude, Michelle, I want to thank you again for coming on the show. And on behalf of a Stotz Academy, I hereby award you alumni status for turning your worst investment ever into your best teaching moment. Do you have any parting words for the audience?

Michelle Seiler Tucker 24:43
I always say really, you know, we've talked about this earlier. align yourself with an expert I always say it's hard to read the label from the inside of the bottle. You need an outsider's perspective to read the warning signs and keep you out of the danger zone.

Andrew Stotz 24:58
Beautiful and that's a wrap On another great story to help us create grow and protect our well fellow risk takers this is your worst podcast hose Andrew Stotz saying I'll see you on the upside.