Hallo
I work in a wine shop that my boss would like to sell. The reason for the sale is that after 3 years he cannot pay himself a full salary on which he can live. I am also the only employee with a permanent contract. Now several parties are interested in taking over with me as co-owner. I will remain employed while retaining my current salary, etc. and at the end of the year we will divide profits. I have to partly buy myself in for that.
Well, I’m not at all familiar with these types of situations and I was wondering what important questions you should ask to your potential interested parties
Thanks
Current owner wants out, parties are interested in co-ownership. The things that I see most necessary is you need to fine comb through the books with an accountant. Besides your confidence that you can turn this business around, you do need to create a concrete business plan to show that operations can continue and what will be changed, and then also develop continencies for probabilistic events. The sale should be done with a purchase agreement and an attorney to shore up weaknesses and liabilities. Cutoff of things and indemnification lines should be drawn and explicitly written out. Get disclosures of anything that could be open liabilty, have a discovery period where you investigate everything.
The co-owners need to have an operating agreement. Have roles clearly defined. Going into business with someone is a huge commitment and requires you to essentially be married per se. You will be chained to each other for nearly ever. The percentage of ownership very much matters for legal reasons, tax reasons, etc. Do not go into business with anyone that you wouldn’t trust with your personal bank account access. And even if you do, build walls. LLC the crap out of this. There is no solid rule for this, but a small business should have ease of access to capital for a year of business at least.
GOOD LUCK