Allan Taylor & Co.

06/09/2026

We've valued and sold dozens of HVAC businesses over the last 20 years, and this article is spot on. We highly recommend reading the entire article. But if you want a quick summary of how to maximize the value of your HVAC business, focus on the following operational goals:

✅ Service agreement revenue percentage: 50%+
✅ Service agreement renewal rate: 90%+ annually
✅ Technician retention: 30%+
✅ Customer concentration: 3% of revenue (max.)
✅ Premium technology stack
✅ Management (not founder) led

⬇️ Read the full article to see how your HVAC business stacks up.⬇️

We just finished a six-week compilation: the complete 2026 HVAC valuation reference. Six operational factors that determine where every HVAC business actually sits on the multiple curve, the math for each, and a full worked example at $1.

04/05/2025

I love it when a client sends me gifts, especially when they’re from Bloom Flowers & Gifts!

09/12/2024

READY TO SELL YOUR ROOFING COMPANY? Our firm has valued and sold several roofing companies over the past 18 years, but we've never seen the buyer response we got from the roofing company we sold last month: It was overwhelming, to say the least.

Right now we have a list of 158 serious (and vetted by us) buyers. They are either individuals or small individual investor groups, other roofing companies, or PEG-back platforms looking for add-ons. In short, I wish I had ten more roofing companies to sell to these guys.

Preferred Business Characteristics:

✅ In business at least five years
✅ Located in the south-central US (preferred: AR, MO, OK, TX, KS, TN, KY)
✅ Annual sales $5M+
✅ EBITDA $1M+
✅ Residential and/or commercial (preferred: Residential insurance claims)
✅ Excellent online reviews & reputation
✅ Sales-driven (i.e. dedicated sales team)
✅ Either W2 subcontractors, or have strong relationships with reliable subs

If you own a successful roofing business -- or work with a client who owns a successful roofing business -- we'd be happy to chat about valuing the business for a future sale and/or selling the business in the next 3-36 months.

Feel free to shoot me an email: [email protected]

05/06/2024

Great article about how retirement can affect the primary relationship in your life. For one of the interviewees in this NYT article, the sale of a business was a big factor. Navigating two transitions at once -- the end of owning your business and the beginning of full retirement -- can be a difficult double whammy.

"For years, Joe said, he had been monomaniacally focused on his exit — on selling the business. He had given almost no thought to what his life would look like once he finally did. 'I had visions of going to the gym,' he said. That turned out to take up no more than an hour of his day. Then what? He was at something of a loss. 'It’s been a kind of transition trying to move away from people that were like my second family,' he said. 'It’s been a little enlightening that once you’re gone, you’re gone.'"

"As they spoke, it became clear that they were each struggling with the reality that Joe was feeling something close to depression. He had taken it very hard when he had lunch with some former colleagues, people still working long hours at the business, and had the sense that once they said their farewells after the meal, they would rarely give him another thought. Seeing that vulnerability moved Barbara. For Joe, retirement meant looking back on the totality of his life and trying to weigh what all that effort had added up to. What did it mean?"

For many relationships, life after work brings an unexpected set of challenges.

07/21/2023

Interesting definition of success from a celebrity entrepreneur. According to Mr. Wonderful it’s got nothing to do with money: Success is having control over your time. We couldn’t agree more.

What is success? The 'Shark Tank' star says it's not about money. It's about time.

07/04/2023

At some point business owners are ready to declare independence from their business; it's a natural part of the process.

Starting and selling a business have several things in common. We often decide to sell a business for the same reason we started it: Freedom.

03/26/2023

Great article in The New York Times this morning about the complexities associated with family succession. One of the five examples is Craig Underwood of Underwood’s Fine Jewelry here in Fayetteville, AR!

Key takeaway: Plan at least ten years in advance for the transition in leadership and ownership, which are two different things.

Succession plans, or the lack thereof, can hinder the transition to a new generation — and affect how loved ones fund their later years.

03/21/2023

2. Pay for a valuation NOW:
Humans always think that we're more important than we really are. And business owners always think that our businesses are worth more than they really are. Before entering into the buy/sell market, it's important to get a reality check.

6. Finally, assemble your TEAM:
You are not going to successfully sell your business at the best value possible without a team effort. Now is the time to think about and assemble your advisory team to help you through this transaction. All important, in my opinion, is to have a great financial person — a certified public accountant or similar — to work alongside you as, in the end, this transaction is all about the numbers and you'll need someone with a financial mind and good communication skills to help you drive it. You'll also need a good attorney to review and create agreements. There may be other experts on the periphery — like a specialized tax person or an insurance advisor. I also strongly recommend using a business broker and making that broker part of your team as well. Brokers serve a vital function — they are experienced in buying and selling companies and can use that experience to move a transaction forward, despite the inevitable obstacles that will be faced.

If you want the maximum price you need to make these moves before you do anything else.

01/20/2023

"For those with little or no real estate to pledge, it is important to find a lender who is skilled at and comfortable with relying on the financial strength of the business for repayment."

This is the real trick. Many banks say they are SBA lenders, but what they really do is a lot of 504 loans for the purchase of hard assets like real estate, machinery and equipment.

When it comes to small business acquisitions, the lender needs to be extremely proficient at "cash-flow lending." The best banks will be upfront about whether or not they are cash-flow lenders.

Choosing the wrong bank for a business acquisition can end up being an enormous waste of time. Do your homework and choose wisely!

At Live Oak Bank, we frequently get questions of this nature from our customers. In this article, we’ll attempt to debunk the common myths of SBA lending.

01/03/2023

Few people talk about the economic domino effect of profitable and successful businesses closing due to an aging owner not having an exit plan.

What's happening in Japan has, does and will continue to happen here in the U.S. as baby boomer business owners retire. The focus always seems to be on the owner/seller and the personal financial consequences of exiting a business. But there are a number of stakeholders who stand to gain/lose based on a successful ownership transition.

Here are a few interesting snippets from the article:

▪ The average age of business owners (in Japan) has risen to around 62: Nearly 60% of the country’s businesses report that they have no plan for what comes next.

▪ Japan’s trade ministry projected that by 2025, around 630,000 profitable businesses could close up shop, costing the economy $165B and as many as 6.5M jobs.

▪ In 2021, government help centers and the top five M&A services found buyers for only 2,413 businesses, according to Japan’s trade ministry. Another 44,000 were abandoned. Over 55% of those were still profitable when they closed. Many of those businesses were in small towns and cities, where the succession problem is a potentially existential threat.

Not sure why cities don't make robust exit planning resources (i.e. more than the occasional one-hour "lunch and learn" from a SCORE representative) a priority in the same way that they emphasize assistance for start-ups. What's the economic cost of a failed startup versus shuttering a 30 year-old business with 50 employees?

An owner’s struggle in Japan’s northern dairy region illuminates one of the potentially devastating economic impacts of an aging society.