California Business Brokers Review

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California Business Brokers is a company dedicated to buying and selling businesses in California, just as the name suggests. If you’ve been thinking about selling your own California-based business or purchasing a new one, we’ve got everything you need to know in this comprehensive California Business Brokers review!

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Overview Of California Business Brokers

The name is very self-indicative of what the business has to offer, but let’s dive into how the company came to exist and a bit more about its history. The business claims to be Southern California’s premier business brokerage. With that being said, they primarily serve Orange County and surrounding areas.

While the brokerage attempts to help as many people as possible, they primarily stick to highly motivated business owners that are ready and able to take their business to the next level. This can include a whole host of pathways, exit planning, growth strategies, or personal wealth diversification.

Since beginning operations, the business has assisted with many business types and helped to produce $150,000,000 in transactions! The powerhouse behind the business is President Christina Lazuric, who founded the company in 2005. Her background originated in electronics, but she left in hopes of becoming a business intermediary.

Lazuric has a long list of accolades and accreditations that make her an excellent businesswoman. She is currently a member of the California Association of Business Brokers, International Association of Business Brokers, and Mergers and Acquisition Source. Additionally, Lazuric is a certified Business Broker, Business Intermediary, and Value Coach.

The business prides itself on having dynamic solutions to broker businesses, thanks to a diversified portfolio of past sold businesses. This has helped the team to develop methods based on key market segments based on what has actually worked for them in the past.

The primary goal of this business brokerage is to create as much value for its clients as possible. They recognize how important selling a business is, both in cost and the strain of offloading something that you’re deeply committed to. With that being said, they are committed to handling each transaction with utmost confidentiality, knowledgeable actions, and accessible resources so that they and you can work together to get the deal done.

All of these skills and commitments have earned California Business Brokers an impressive list of repeat clients who return to the company time after time again. Both on the buying and selling side, repeat customers indicate that they’re doing something very right.

Additional Team Members

Working alongside Christina Lazuric is a well-versed team with diverse talents. Leo Woscoff, husband to Christina, represents the global sales and marketing, and operations aspect of the business. He is responsible for creating, implementing, and executing commercial strategies in order to service and grow existing customers as well as bring in new ones.

Brad Mewes acts as the company’s automotive aftermarket industry insight. He is very familiar with automobiles, having grown up in a workshop. Combining that with his well-rounded education, including an MBA from UC Irvine, Brad is well-equipped to help the business thrive.

Ben Hargis has experience with helping to locate buyers for business sellers and then navigating the transaction process from start to finish. He brings over eight years of experience to California Business Brokers and has developed a sturdy list of clients and resources to help any hopeful buyer or seller navigate the market. Some areas that he specializes in include RV dealerships, plumbing, advertising agencies, and service businesses.

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Types Of Businesses California Business Brokers Sells

There are no particular business types that California Business Broker sells. All transactions are considered on a case-by-case basis, and when it comes to who they have world with, past clients include:

• manufacturing
• electronics
• logistics
• franchises
• retail, including warehouses, boutique, specialty, department, discount, and general stores
• e-commerce
• medical, including equipment supply and retail, home, and hospice care
• distribution, including food, commodities, auto parts, and DME
• food, including import and distribution and manufacturing
• restaurants, including independent and franchised, and liquor licensed or not.

In addition to seller representation, the California Business Brokers team also offers other similar services to help provide for each unique situation. If you do not wish to have fuller seller representation, you can commission their team to simply draft a valuation document.

This is called an Opinion of Value, and they will write up a comprehensive report for you based on their findings, which assigns a dollar amount to your business. The assistance for this package option will stop there but leaves room for you to represent yourself in the transaction or just have an understanding of your business’ worth.

You might also use the consulting and coaching service if you need a little assistance with understanding your options or growing your business. This is another alternative to the fully involved seller representation option. While California Business Brokers is usually involved in transactions from start to finish, business owners can choose a limited alternative where they are consulted on the best course of action, primarily when they’re looking to sell. They also offer coaching, which is different from consulting.

Coaching includes the brokerage’s team working with a seller for months up to a year prior to going on the market to ensure that they have the best sale price. This is done via increasing value drivers, and you and the team would work collaboratively to increase the value of your site.

Another service that is offered is commercial lease space negotiation. This option veers a bit from the typical business brokerage offerings but is very important. California Business Brokers will help to negotiate existing leases even if you are starting a business from scratch and you need representation. The team will work to provide you with insight to make sure you’re getting the best possible deal.

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California Business Brokers Valuation Process

When it comes to evaluating, this business broker offers what they call an opinion of value. With that, business owners can expect a well-researched monetary value assigned to their business by the broker’s team.

The reports are typically 20 pages long and include a comprehensive analysis of the business to help value it. Profit, loss and gain comparisons, longevity, business health, and more are all very important factors when determining your business’ value. The reports also factor in the national statistical averages and real field experiences.

There are no universal answers when it comes to evaluating your business. In fact, many aspects will affect the outcome, and you may be surprised to see a similar business in size and location is worth less or more than your own. The best way to understand the actual value is to schedule a consultation in which they’ll look in-depth at your unique business.

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Sales Process for Sellers

The sale timeline can significantly vary from business to business. There is no universal time frame, no single cost, or one size that fits all. When you reach out to the team working with this company to sell your business, they’ll assign a value and then adjust the timeline based on what will help maintain or improve value.

Ways to increase the value which may affect the sale process include:

• selling at the right time
• identifying or creating business protection and barriers
• identify issues that will affect the value and address them ahead of time in order to protect the value
• locating interested buyers with a genuine interest in the business.
• identify key business drivers and properly outline them for buyer consideration
• implement competitive tension
• narrow chances of surprises that might make buyer back out of the deal
• resist any pushes for price reduction by buyers down the line

All of these aspects are unique to each business transaction and may alter the process. When you select California Business Brokers, all of these steps will be taken care of, and you won’t need to dedicate as much time or worry to making things flow as you would otherwise.

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California Business Brokers Success Rates

This business brokerage has quite a comprehensive list of successful sales. In fact, you can even visit their website and find businesses that have recently been sold or that are in escrow. A couple of examples include:

• A restoration company, status: in escrow, proceeds – $800,000, California Business Brokers represented both buyers and sellers in this transaction
• A delivery messenger service, status: in escrow, proceeds – $1,000,000+, they represented both buyers and sellers in this transaction
• ReAmp Recording Studios, status: private investor, no cost details, they represented both buyers and sellers in this transaction
• The Brush Guys, status: private investor, no cost details, they represented buyer and sellers in this transaction

The business attributes its high success rate to its team’s high standard of honesty and integrity. Additionally, the team has diversified, real knowledge of the market that cannot be reproduced. With that, they are familiar with the proper pricing of businesses and how to price a business to sell successfully without losing profit.

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Fees Charged By California Business Brokers To Sell A Business

Unfortunately, this company does not publish their broker’s fees on their website for consideration. If a business is interested in using California Business Brokers as a middle man, they will need to reach out for proper fee information.

However, we can consider average California business broker fees to get an idea. Generally, Southern California fees are 10% on a $10,000 minimum. If you head up north, you may find that the fees rise a bit to roughly 12% per $15,000 minimum.

These numbers will vary by brokerage, but the good news is that commission fees are negotiable. If you’ve got leverage or feel like taking a chance for cheaper representation, there’s no harm in asking!

The only fee section on the website states that sellers are responsible for paying any transaction fees. Also, if you are purchasing one of California Business Brokers’ own listings, no fees are required.

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Pros And Cons Of Using California Business Brokers

Pros

Strong Operating Team

The entire team, from the top with Lazuric, is comprehensive with backgrounds in all aspects of the business. This provides unique insight for buyers and sellers and means that all aspects of the business are based on actual industry standards, including tips and tricks.

Plenty of Successful Deals

From the list on the website with current deals that are in the process of closing to deals far in the past, they have a lot of experience with successful transactions.

Multiple Industry

In addition to having many successful deals, it’s even more impressive that the business niches are so varied. There is no specific niche that California Business Brokers operates within. Instead, they have experience across the board, making it more accessible to businesses with different specialties.

Adaptable Services

In addition to full representation, business owners and hopeful buyers can choose other services that are less involved. From consulting and coaching to lease negotiation, the services offered by this broker are far-reaching.

Cons

Inaccessible Information

Many competitors list all relevant information on their website, including things like cost, but that is not the case here. Something as important as the fee structure should readily be available on the website, yet interested parties will need to reach out before they have an idea of the fee scale.

We do realize that any business broker will need to know specifics of a business before they can give concrete answers but in regard to fees, this should be pretty straightforward and not something that is hard to find. Our preference is using a business broker that reveals their fees openly.

We contacted California Business Brokers to get more information about their firm and about fees, but they did not tell us anything more unless we went further into the process.