We are in the 11th hour of purchasing a small business. Throughout the due diligence process the seller has been hyper-paranoid about his employees (whom are in their 60s and 70s) catching wind of the sale, so we have had to access the property only after business hours. Even after the Purchase Agreement has been signed he is STILL very squirrely about his employees finding out. (1) is this normal? (2) any obvious red flags?
Note: seller is hands-off and remote. Employees operate the day-to-day.
From someone who inherited “great staff” , don’t just take them on, go through the hiring process. They will be your team and from the start its best to eatablish that you are now the new owner and that change is happening. We lost all our staff the first 4 months, they were great , but great with the previous owners. They were resistant to change and treated us like we know nothing. We have our team now and its the best thing that happen to us.