Is Now the Time to Sell Your Business? Heed these signals, says M&A advisor Michelle Seiler Tucker

In 2013, when M&A expert Michelle Seiler Tucker wrote Sell Your Business For More Than It's Worth, her research showed that 85-95% of all startups between 1-5 years old were at risk of going out of business.

Last year, however, when she wrote Exit Rich, she conducted the same research on a sampling of 27,636,360 companies and learned the business landscape had changed dramatically. In 2019, (prior to Covid), only 30% of startups of 1-5 years will fail. That is excellent progress. However, for that same sampling, a whopping 70% of ventures in business for 10 years or longer were in danger of failing.

On a daily basis we're reading headlines about the failure of box retail stores like Toy "R" Us, JC Penny, Stein Mart, etc. But what we're also experiencing even more acutely, according to Seiler-Tucker, is the plethora of mom and pop businesses on every corner, every town, and every U.S. state going out of business right now.