Headlines: Client Investments | Buying Real Estate with Self-directed IRAs | Finding Businesses for Sale Online Faster
Spotlight Client
Lori Price, Dallas, Texas
Lori and her husband currently own a tavern in Texas and are in the process of purchasing an Asian Grill with existing 401(k) funds. With a desire of wanting more flexibility in her schedule, Lori decided to buy an existing restaurant using Guidant’s Audeo plan. Now she will be able to pick up her children from school and take them to all their after-school activities.
“I chose this financing option because I didn’t want to touch any of my assets that I already had,” Lori says. “I liked the idea of using my 401(k), because my investments were earning such poor returns. The best feature of this financing option is I am able to utilize [my retirement funds] without penalty while generating far better returns for my 401(k).”
To be considered as a featured client, please send your business success story to lindsay.downing@guidantfinancial.com.
Spotlight Business Alliance
BrandONE Franchise Development
BrandONE Franchise Development, founded by Kurt Landwehr assists franchise companies in the area of franchise development. BrandONE works with franchisors that choose to get out from underneath the overhead and cost structure of having an in house development department by outsourcing the development process, and increasing the number of franchisees recruited. Franchisors benefit from BrandONE’s experience, expertise industry contacts and working with many well known franchisors. BrandONE is headquartered in Minneapolis, MN.
Kurt can reached at 763.201.1470 or by email at kurt.brandone@sbnets.com. For more information on BrandONE please visit www.brandoneinc.com.
Spotlight Franchise
Snap Fitness
Snap Fitness is a unique fitness club that was created to ensure that its members are able to work on their own schedule by having 24/7 operating hours. Snap Fitness provides franchisees the benefit of using a unique system, which incorporates the use of surveillance cameras, along with a certified trained staff to keep operating costs low. In 2007, Snap Fitness was ranked 11th of top new franchise by Entrepreneur Magazine.
Snap Fitness is committed to making new franchise owners build success quickly by guiding them through a step-by-step process that includes: site selection, lease negotiations, location build-out, ordering initial materials and supplies, hands-on training at their corporate offices, on-site sales staff the entire first week of the store opening, and ongoing monthly training and sales seminars.
Client Investments
Name: Brian Curcio
Investment Purchase Date: March 2007
Program Used: Self-directed IRA - Auriga™
Investment Description: Brian is currently making investments with his self-directed IRA in private lending through a real estate development company. In the last four months he has completed 3 deals for a return of about 12%.
Motivation: “I plan on continuing with this type of investing for the next few years and then, hopefully, I will have enough money in my self-directed IRA account to buy my own piece of real estate property without leverage, which has always been a goal of mine.”
Buying Real Estate with Self-directed IRAs:
You don’t have to be an expert before taking the leap
By: Sharon Faiola Petersen
There’s a significant gap between knowing you can buy real estate with a self-directed IRA and knowing enough to actually do it. Most people who have gathered sufficient information about this tax-free option have already plunged into it. Others, though, are unsure about taking that first big step. They see the opportunity to significantly grow their retirement accounts through investments in property, tax liens, foreclosures, etc., yet they’re frozen in a “Should I or shouldn’t I?” stance, like a first-time bungee jumper holding up the rest of the line.
Naturally, when it comes to the possibility of using a chunk of one’s life savings, caution should be exercised. But it could be that many investors are simply hesitant to take the leap because they’ve heard about the complexities of self-directed IRA structures and they don’t feel confident in their own understanding of them.
Those of us in the retirement investment facilitation business (I work for Guidant Financial Group) have been, perhaps, too quick to point out the challenges of setting up these kinds of accounts. Yes, they are complex. And yes, you need to do due diligence with your IRA transactions. But maybe we’ve scared a few people off by implying that they, themselves, have to know and understand every minute detail of IRS, DOL and ERISA law before setting up self-directed IRA accounts. They don’t!
All the rollover, documentation and legal work can be done for investors via an account facilitator. And understanding the finer nuances of government prohibitions on IRS-purchases is best left to the professionals, anyway. A good and credible retirement account facilitator will explain to its clients in jargon-free language the options available and the ramifications of choosing various structures. It will do most of the legwork setting up the structure for its clients, so clients don’t have to jump through the hoops themselves.
The bottom line is: while investors should do their homework, if they utilize the services of a respected and experienced retirement account facilitator, they don’t have to be a self-directed account expert. While they may be waiting around to learn all there is to know about self-directed IRAs, those properties they’ve been eyeing certainly aren’t. They’re being scooped up by somebody else.
To learn more about self-directed IRAs or real investments, contact Guidant Financial Group at 888.472.4455 or at www.guidantfinancial.com.
Finding Businesses for Sale Online Faster:
5 Reasons Why You Should Go Online
By: Bill Henthorn
Like everything from books to baby formula, business enterprises can now be purchased online.. No longer limited to classifieds, catalogs, brokers and word-of-mouth, investors can turn to the convenience of online sites to discover the best deals for themselves. In this article, Bill Henthorn, marketing director for online marketplace Acquireo, introduces Savvy Investor readers to the concept of searching the Internet for businesses to buy.
Why online? By going online, you’ll find the information is already organized in one place, it’s complete and kept up-to-date, it’s easy to search, and the buyers who search these sites range from people like you and me up to publicly-traded companies. Think about it as a new form of transportation, a vehicle to get where you want to go.
You probably feel comfortable driving your own car. But sometimes, doesn’t it feel like going to one of these sites is like being talked into piloting a 747? (“Whatever you do, DO NOT push that one.”) These business-for-sale listing sites are exactly the reverse: extremely powerful vehicles, safe to use (“go ahead and push that one”), and have become so easy to figure out, that it will feel like a Sunday drive.
Let’s take a look to see if hopping into this car feels okay with you. Ready?
Reason 1: The businesses are organized in one (virtual) place: the Internet.
Think of these businesses-for-sale listing websites as giving you a new form of classified ads to read. Business brokers and private sellers set up accounts to sell businesses, just like real estate brokers and home sellers who take out ads in your Sunday newspaper’s home section. In searching for real estate, you might first identify your price range, the locations you want, and then look for features in listings that match your must-have checklist. It’s the same process when looking at businesses for sale online, except you have more “Sunday home sections” from more newspapers easily available to you in the comfort of your home or office.
Reason 2: The sites can easily hold more information and keep it updated.
One of the wonderful aspects of the Internet compared to a newspaper or magazine ad is that: the listings themselves have more information and can include color photos, links to documents, and be updated within minutes. Most firms have dedicated personnel whose jobs are just to keep their online listing inventory updated on the various sites they use to market and advertise.
Reason 3: Because it costs less, more businesses are exclusively advertised on the Internet.
More business brokers are shifting their resources online to conduct their marketing and advertising. Why? The budget once used to buy a five-line newspaper ad in a single newspaper for a single week can now advertise hundreds of business listings across the country for months. Then they back up this decision by hiring staff to manage their listing information on the sites.
Reason 4: More buyers in all price ranges use these sites to find businesses.
You might think these sites are just for the folks who want a simple retail or restaurant business, and business brokers keep the businesses priced above $1 million out of these listing sites. Right? That might have been true in the early days, but you now will find businesses priced from $20,000 to $200 million. And just like the range of prices, the range of buyers has increased, so that the sophisticated high-finance crowd of merger and acquisitions firms representing stock-exchange listed companies and private equity firms looking for portfolio companies do their hunting online within these same sites.
Reason 5: If you find any part of the process too much, hire a professional.
Most sites have directories of business brokerage firms categorized by state. Some sites give only bare-bones information like an unpaid Yellow Pages phone directory listing; others give you the full description of the firm’s specialties by industry, geographical coverage, price ranges of businesses they cover, and link to the firm’s own website so you can get a closer look.
Now that we have taken a good look at this vehicle, you can see that it makes a lot of sense to get behind the wheel and turn on the ignition.
Formerly principal broker and owner of a Honolulu resort / commercial real estate brokerage, Bill Henthorn practices high-touch customer service as the director of marketing at Acquireo (www.acquireo.com/buy-a-business.aspx?gfg1), an Internet business-for-sale listing marketplace. You can contact him at 415-933-9030 | brokerlogics@acquireo.com.
