Published for owners considering a sale
You've spent years — often decades — building your assisted living community into a place families trust with the people they love most. You've hired and trained a team you care about almost as much as your own family. And you may be nearing the time in your life when you want to take some chips off the table, transition to a different role, or just spend more time with your family.
Selling your business can be one of the most significant events in your life. And selling to the right person can be the difference between the quiet satisfaction of watching your community continue to grow, and the struggle of watching a private equity firm cut staff and disrupt the care your residents depend on. From speaking with owners on both sides of the buying and selling table, three fundamental seller questions have stood out to us:
1. If I sell you my business, what will be your mission?
It can be easy to ask a buyer about how they'll handle the business in the near term, but how can you make sure it's going to be run for the right reasons decades down the line? Understanding a buyer's underlying motivations is the key to understanding what your community will be like decades later. Is money the most important thing for the buyer? Or do they gain more satisfaction from serving residents, families, and staff? What will their measure of success be in the long term?
2. What are your core values?
In addition to knowing what a buyer wants to do with your business, it's also key to understand the how. What are the guiding principles for which the buyer lives their life and conducts business? Do they align with yours? Are they a person of honesty and integrity? Do they take short cuts, or do they put an emphasis on doing things right the first time?
Understanding the core values of a buyer can help you visualize how they would make decisions about serving residents, families, staff and other stakeholders. After you transition from your business, all the key decisions you used to make will be made by the buyer. By asking about a buyer's core values, you can gain insight into how those decisions will be made after new ownership.
3. Are you passionate about senior care?
In addition to keeping residents and families delighted, you'll want to ensure the buyer will continue to invest in the caregiving, programming and community that you've already built. This matters most of all for assisted living and memory care, where trust and consistency are core to the community's identity.
Not only will a new owner who is passionate about senior care help maintain a forward-thinking position for your community, it is likely necessary to ensure that your residents continue to be delighted and your staff continue to love their jobs. If your buyer is a larger corporation or investment portfolio, you may want to consider how high of a priority senior care is versus other investments that your buyer may want to make.
Selling a business, let alone one that you've poured your heart and soul into, can be a hard process. It's not just a transaction for you, but a transition for both yourself and your community. Thus, it may make sense to consider the long-term ramifications of your decision beyond the purchase terms. If you are at all considering a transition for your assisted living business, we'd love to chat. Reach out any time. We look forward to meeting you.