Preparing Your Fitness Studio for Sale
Lending Muscle to Your Phoenix Fitness Studio Sale Prep Work
Selling a business isn’t an easy process, and that includes fitness studios. However, you can follow the path of many other business professionals before you to help design the process. As you work to prepare your Phoenix-area fitness studio for sale, take a moment to envision what you need to do through a fitness metaphor and framework. Then marry that vision with data so you can best position yourself for a successful and financially lucrative sale.
Warming Up
Begin with your warm-up exercises: gathering your necessary paperwork, conducting appraisals and assessments, and digging up comps. Of these three warm-up activities, the first is most important. Potential buyers will want to take a peek at your financial statements. Make sure your financial paperwork is up to date and consider your current roster of clients. Those areas build a picture of your fitness studio’s overall health. During this process, have potential buyers sign a non-disclosure agreement to protect your privacy as well as the privacy of your clientele. You might also consider having a CPA audit of your finances while you also allow other experts to look at your paperwork to ensure everything is in line.
Continue warming up by conducting your own preliminary appraisal while also locating a professional appraiser who is experienced in commercial properties. During your assessment, take account of all of the equipment you intend to transfer to the purchaser of your fitness studio. Don’t forget to depreciate equipment value, even if some pieces are nearly new. You can follow the IRS publication on depreciation to come to fair numbers. Your hired appraiser or assessor will consider just your fixed property – your land and any structures on it.
To finish warming up, work on your own or with your agent to find comps for other similar businesses that have sold in comparable locations. Look first within the greater Phoenix area. If you can’t find enough data, enlarge your search to include cities that have similar population, demographics and cost of living.
Time for Heavy Lifting
During your appraisals and assessments, areas of concern may have emerged that need attention before the sale. Work to fix any issues noted, conduct any updates necessary and get your paperwork and compliance issues ready to pass to a new owner. Pay any outstanding bills, file necessary governmental paperwork and satisfy local requirements to hand over your business after it sells. This can be time consuming and uncomfortable, but like lifting, you’ll wind up in great shape.
Get Some Cardio
You’re warmed up and have done some heavy lifting, so now it’s time for cardio: getting in a workout to show off your business to potential buyers.
One of the most important areas is pulling together marketing that attracts the perfect buyers for your business. From stats on the health of the fitness industry (60 million health club memberships in the US alone) to the positive bragging points your gathered paperwork revealed, you’ll be able to jump through any necessary hoops to get an offer, and then a completed contract to sell your business.
Now’s the time to lace up your sneakers, warm up your business with comprehensive paperwork and assessments, do the heavy lifting of getting your physical property ready to transfer and huff and puff through an informative marketing campaign that highlights the health of your business.
If you're looking to buy or sell a business in Phoenix soon, don't wait until it's time to take action. Contact the brokers at LINK Phoenix to get advice about how to start the process and see how we can put things in motion to assist you.
Please contact Lisa Riley and she will pair you with your ideal broker, Lisa.Riley@LINKBusiness.com or schedule your complimentary 15-minute phone conversation by clicking the link below.