Transcript:
Hey there this is Dave again from the investlocalbook.com blog site and I got a question from someone who is talking about their personal private information when it comes to signing the NDA non-disclosure agreement, when being a buyer or seller of a business. Basically asking, can I trust that the other party is not going to divulge my information? Well let’s look at it from both sides of the transaction. So, from the sellers point of view they want to sell a business. And their personal private information might include the financial statement of the business. And of course they are worried if they share that information with prospective buyers, that these buyers will go and share that information with other people. So here is the one thing that you have to understand. The buyer is motivated to buy a business for some reasons. Either they hate their job, they don't have a job, they want to expand their existing business, what have you. If they break confidentiality and tell people that your business is for sale, they might ruin your business which will destroy the very thing that they are trying to buy to achieve their goals.
Now as long as they understand that, so when I was a broker I use to tell that to buyers, I use to say, look you have to protect confidentiality of this information. And even the fact that the business is for sale, because this is the solution to you problem. And if you break confidentiality, you are going to ruin the solution to your problem. And that usually took care of things. I only ever have one buyer that had callous disregard for confidentiality, and I fired him, he was gone. Now from the other point of view, if you are a buyer and you are disclosing personal information to sellers and brokers etc. Then it becomes a question of what kind of professionals are you dealing with, and you know one of the greatest tools that has come along in the last few years that can help judge how professional someone is, is a website called LinkedIn. On LinkedIn, you can look someone up and you can see how many contacts they have, and you can see how many people endorse them; give them a little thumbs up or a plus sign.
for different skills. For example if you go and look me up on LinkedIn; David Barnett, you are going to realize that over 99 people have endorsed me for entrepreneurship, close to that number for small business etc. There is a whole list of attributes, those people have actually looked at me, they know me, they are connected to me and they say, yep, David is an expert in that field. So when someone looks at my LinkedIn profile and they see hundreds of endorsements, it's a really great way to know that you are dealing with a professional person. On the other hand if you go and look in someone's profile and they are like four people that endorse them, then you have to wonder, how well is this person known in the community, how long have they been in business, why don't they have this web of connections with other movers and shakers in the industry. It's one of the ways that you help verify if you are dealing with someone who is out there and who is what they say they are.
If you are a buyer and you go to a broker who says he is connected to all these different people and all these different businesses, then there should be evidence of this online. Any way that's my insights into how you can know whether you trust someone with your private information. If you are interested in learning more how to buy a business, you should be checking out my online business buyer course which is at, www.businessbuyeradvantage.com. See you next time thanks.
The Invest Local Book blog is all about small business, franchises, local investing, home economics, small business systems and borrowing money for your business. It's full of great content and I look forward to seeing your feedback. Sign up for my mailing list and don't miss a thing! [CLICK NOW]
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