American Business Brokers & Advisors - November 2024

INFORMATION IS THE KEY TO EVERYTHING

Every day we are bombarded with information, whether it comes from the newspapers, television, emails, social media, or from friends and family. Much of this information is meant to sway our opinions toward the source of the information’s point of view.

over the years that major convenience store companies and appraisers contact us to share with them what we believe the value of convenience stores may be. As a company, we have a fiduciary responsibility to the companies we work with and the clients we work with to give them what we believe is the correct information as to what their convenience stores are worth in the marketplace. This is the information the owners of these convenience stores are looking for, and you can’t make an intelligent decision without the correct information. It doesn’t make a difference if you have one store or 50 stores you still need the information. In addition, we don’t charge the companies or the individuals who contact us for this information, and we do this because someday, they may need our services from the other side of American Business Brokers & Advisors, the brokerage side. Recently, I was talking with someone who is in the convenience store business, and they wanted to know how much their convenience stores were worth. They said they knew how to figure EBITDA, and they could determine the value themselves if I would just share with them the multiple that buyers were paying. I told them I wished it was that simple, because EBITDA or net profit is just part of the equation when it comes to determining market value. Other factors come into play, such as the quality of the assets being sold, the location of the store, whether it is rural, city, or major market, and competition. And these are just a few of the factors needed to determine market value. I then shared with them that they would probably be surprised if they knew how many convenience store owners I tell NOT to sell their stores. Why? There are many reasons, such as the store hasn’t been developed to its full potential, or we have uncovered a possible succession plan that may work for the owners, or it may be just a simple fix as selling a portion of the stores, thereby reducing debt and workload. There are many different reasons, but the bottom line is that we are really in the information business. You see, nobody but you can decide whether to buy or sell something. The decision alone is yours. We are nothing more than a company with information that can be used to make an intelligent decision. As an owner and operator of convenience stores, you owe it to yourself and your loved ones to have an idea as to what your business is worth. It doesn’t cost you anything, so why wouldn’t you do it? If you think it is too much work, you are wrong. To get a 5,000-foot view of the market value of your convenience stores, all we need is a list of the stores with addresses, three years of income and expenses of the stores, and three years of gallons of fuel sold. This is the same information every operator should already have in their files. To learn more about how you can find out what your convenience stores are worth, contact me at Terry@TerryMonroe.com . We can arrange for you to get a confidential market valuation of your convenience stores.

This applies to all walks of life: medical, political, food, friends, relationships, everything.

Then we have this thing called disinformation, where the source is trying to get us to believe something the source knows is not true, but here again, it is a tactic to sway our opinion toward their point of view. Next, we have very wealthy people like George Soros, who has a far-left opinion of how the world should be run and is in the process of buying 200 radio stations (which are being fast-tracked by the present FCC to obtain licenses) so he can share his political point of view with us. Then we have Elon Musk, who bought Twitter, which is now called X and is using this platform to share his point of view with the world, too, with his opinion of free speech. In reality, nothing has really changed. Because he who has the printing press or control of the media controls what information the people will get and will always be used to sway people’s mindsets about things. The name of my business, which I started 25 years ago, is American Business Brokers & Advisors. To be totally transparent, in the beginning, it was called American Business Brokers, and over time, we added Advisors to the name because we discovered the longer we were in business, the more knowledge and data we had accumulated, especially in the convenience store industry. We have accumulated enough data

–Terry Monroe

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WWW.TERRYMONROE.COM

800.805.9575

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