This morning I was reviewing the week and some of the people and situations I dealt with. One gentleman in particular who was buying a business for his daughter (40 year old daughter) made a comment about the lack of sophistication of the sellers.
I don’t think the comment was intended as an insult but it reminded me of the movie “Back to School” starring Rodney Dangerfield. One scene in particular
always makes me laugh. Rodney plays a highly successful entrepreneur who returns to college and is taking an economics class with a particularly snobby professor who is teaching the class about starting up a fictional company. Dangerfield interrupts several times with points about doing business in the real world.
This clip very much is reminiscent of the tension that exists between buyers from the corporate world and sellers who have been very successful. You see as in much of life what you learn in the classroom and what works in the real world are two dramatically different things. There is transfer ability and application but never in the purest form.
To put it in military terms small business is hand to hand combat not global thermonuclear war. Both are deadly but require different skills, tactics, and perspective to be successful. The wise buyer would do well to reflect on a blend of the two and not be so quick to dismiss the small business owner as “unsophisticated”