A Little Pillow Talk Goes a Long Way – Keeping Your Spouse Informed

Here is an interesting story for you to consider… especially if you are married and thinking about buying a business.

We had a buyer looking for a business for months and his wife told him she was on board with everything. He found a business that he wanted to buy and did his due diligence. He visited the business, he talked to the owner about the business, he started working with our broker to develop an offer, and he wrote an escrow check to include with the offer. The prospective buyer then told us to present to the seller.

One hour later, we get a frantic call back from the prospective buyer asking if we had presented the offer yet… because his wife is not as “on board” as he thought she was. We also find out that what the buyer put down on his financial statement as money available ended up being one third of what he thought because his wife is not willing to contribute to the purchase of the business.

The moral of the story: make sure your spouse understands the process and what it is going to take to buy a business before you get to the table to finalize the deal. This could be taking a significant portion of the savings accounts to fund the deal. The perceived risk may be higher in your spouse’s view when they realize that a “guaranteed” paycheck is no longer on the table. It might be as simple as she didn’t think you were SERIOUS. Avoid this headache by having many conversations with your spouse and keep him or her in the loop as much as necessary.

If you need help avoiding these kinds of problems, please give us a call at (913) 383-2671.