How to Sell Your Business for Premium
Updated on September 17, 2025
Transcript
Have you ever wondered why some online businesses have buyers looking to literally fight each other to acquire that business? Well, I've analyzed 84 real deals sold on the Empire Flippers marketplace, and the competition numbers might just blow your mind.
You know, a lot of people ask, "Well, why should I even use a broker? What's the deal?" I am going to show you why you should and how you can sell your business for a premium. And it's a bit of a partnership because the broker, like us, helps solve one part of the equation. But you, as the entrepreneur, as the person selling the actual business—your product—need to help the broker solve the other part of the problem. When our two powers combine, you can make a very life-changing exit.
So, when we're looking at these 84 deals or so that I reviewed, on average, we had 81 buyers who signed an NDA to look at that business. Now, most brokers can claim dozens of NDAs per listing. At Empire Flippers, we work pretty differently than most other brokers. Where other brokers just have you sign a piece of paper and you're good to go, at Empire Flippers, we annoy our buyers a bit because they have to actually verify their liquidity with us before they can ever look at any businesses—which some buyers really hate about us. But what this means is those average 81 buyers looking at a deal are not only signing an NDA because they're interested in the business, but they've already proven to us, "Yeah, I have the money to actually acquire this business if I like it." That's very, very different from how most brokers do it.
So, in this video, I am going to show you how you can use the Empire Flippers marketplace, and your own skills with your own business, to leverage all this juicy competition that creates this awesome feeding frenzy, with buyers fighting over you left and right to acquire your business. So let's get right into it.
What most people don't realize when it comes to buying or selling a business is that we're not really in a buyer's or seller's market. Now, of course, both of those things do exist and that pendulum swings, but it's better to look at the market not as a buyer's or a seller's market, but rather as a competition market. Every listing faces an average of 81 potential buyers who sign that NDA, willing to put their reputation on the line just for a chance to buy your business.
While macroeconomics are important—things like a buyer's or seller's market, what's going on in the industry—so much of M&A actually lives in the micro, not the macro. This means your business being high quality is actually the utmost important part that will start the buyer feeding frenzy. And it also means that even in an industry where things aren't looking great, that doesn't mean you can't make a life-changing exit. Because, yeah, maybe the macro of the industry is not great, but the micro of the business is on fire—in a really good way, not in a bad way. That's what I mean. Like, so much of M&A is done on the micro, not the macro.
Keep that in mind as we go through this video because it'll be very helpful for you with what I'm going to tell you to do.
So, on average across all of our listings, we have about 42.9% of our listings receive what I would consider very high interest—which is like 51 to 100 buyers. And then an additional 26.2% of our listings see what I would consider exceptional interest, which is a hundred-plus buyers who are all signing the NDA. And remember, that's a hundred-plus buyers who are qualified and can actually financially afford the business they're looking at, not just some random person signing a random NDA that isn't qualifying them in any way.
So you are at a big advantage when you use a broker to sell your business because of this. There's a joke—it's kind of a marketer joke—that is relevant. It goes like this: if you have a problem recruiting employees for your company, you need to get more leads. You have profit problems? Generate more leads. You want to scale your business? Lead generation. You got any business problem? Overwhelm your business problem with lead generation.
The model here is that the majority of business problems can actually be solved if you have an abundance of qualified leads overflowing your business at any given time. It gives you room to breathe, to charge more premium prices, and in general helps your business grow a lot faster than almost anything else. If you have a “too many leads” problem, that's a good thing. It puts you in a position of power. It puts you in a position of leverage.
So, when 81 people on average are coming to look at your business to give you potentially seven figures, you get to control the terms and you're creating what we in the M&A space call a market. Now, if a SaaS client listed with us for $340,000 and they received, say, 94 inquiries in week one, how much more leverage do you think they have than if they went off-market and got into exclusive due diligence with just a single potential buyer? I'll tell you, because I've seen the story play out—not a whole lot. Typically, it's a bad move. I don't recommend it.
I have many friends who—one in particular I always think about—sold his business and sent me a message like, "Hey man, sorry, I just didn't want to pay the commission." And I asked him, "No worries, how much did you sell for? I'm just curious." When he told me, I kind of laughed in a sad way, because we could have gotten him way more money and he would have walked away with way more money even after he paid us our commission. And funny enough, he actually would have paid us more commission than he initially thought. He thought our commission was lower, but even with our real commission, which was higher than he originally thought, he would have walked away with more money at the end of the day.
A big part of that is because we can create this market. At any given time, there are tens of thousands of visitors visiting the Empire Flippers marketplace, looking at businesses, signing NDAs, making offers, making deals. We handle a big portion of this equation, which is the first part—creating that market of demand. But you must help us with the second part, because the broker can't really help you do the second part. We can guide you, give you advice, but ultimately it is your responsibility to do the second part.
A broker like us makes the market and makes you a desirable asset, right? But for you, there are three important things you need to consider. Now, there's tons more than three of course, but in general, there are three things you want to be looking at to make sure that you can best leverage this market demand that we will create for your business.
So, step one: you're a growing business. You should be able to show these buyers that are signing that NDA that you have year-over-year growth. And when I say year-over-year growth, ideally at least three years of that, and ideally it does not look like you're plateauing. I have so many friends who have lost millions of dollars because they decided to sell their business at the top. This is not the right time to sell your business, because your top is the buyer's bottom. Their valley of stagnation is your summit, right? So we don't want to do that. We want to sell the business as it's growing. What do buyers want? They want to buy growth. The whole reason they're giving you all this money is because they want to grow the business. So you should give them that opportunity. You will have a higher multiple, a shorter time to sell, and you're going to get a better deal structure almost every time.
Step two is simple systems. I have friends who are insanely good at driving traffic and doing marketing or doing X, Y, Z. And the moment you start talking to them, you're like, "Wow, that is so impressive. In fact, it's so impressive I feel like I can't do any of this." So the buyer just says, "No, I don't want to acquire this because I don't know how I would even do this.” You don't want to be in that situation. Whatever is complex in your business, you need to analyze it, simplify it, and break it down. If I can't look at your business, look at a standard operating procedure, and roughly have a good 70–85% chance of succeeding at doing that thing based on your SOP, then you’ve got work to do. You want simple systems. Simple systems are easy to understand, and as I often say, “Simplicity scales and complexity fails.” Especially when it comes to M&A, because you don't want to scare away buyers because you have overcomplicated your systems.
All right, step three—and the most important step in my view, and also the one I think is the funniest to say: become useless. You should be the most useless person in your entire business. And this is very different from how a lot of entrepreneurs think, because entrepreneurs often are driven a little bit by ego—"I'm the best, I'm doing this, I'm changing the world, whatever it is, my team relies on me," all that kind of stuff. This is bad if you want to sell for a premium price because, again, what do buyers want? They want to buy growth, and they want to buy a machine of leverage.
If they buy your business and they have to work 80 hours a week because that's what you're doing, there's not a whole lot of machine of leverage there. You know what I mean? They're buying themselves probably a pretty stressful job, and you don't want to be that kind of business. Ideally, I always say you're useless—but when I say that, I mean you're focusing on strategy, not the day-to-day. You should have employees, systems, and infrastructure in place that are handling most of the day-to-day. You should not be involved. And if you're running a bigger business, you might not even be involved in strategy and growth that much anymore. Those are the absolute best businesses, and those are true absentee-owner businesses. They create massive demand.
Even a buyer that wants to acquire something and really roll up their sleeves and work—if they see that your business is processed out to the point where you're barely doing anything at all to maintain what you're doing, and ideally even growing it that way—how much more confidence do you think that buyer will have when they start applying some real growth tactics to something that you've been just kind of "lifestyle-ing"? This is very, very attractive to buyers.
So, you do those three things, then you come to someone like us and we create a massive market. And you, too, could have 81 different buyers—qualified, proven with real financial statements with us—looking to make you potentially a millionaire. We made 88 of them already. You might be number 89. Or maybe you come to us and we help you get half a million dollars. Still a pretty good payday, right? Considering our average sale takes about 117 days, you might be just a little bit over a quarter away from collecting hundreds of thousands of dollars. As long as you follow those three steps and then you come to someone like us, we can create a market for you.
And remember, no matter if you feel it's a buyer's or a seller's market, M&A works at its finest not on the macro, but on the micro. Talk to you soon.
