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Show Summary
In this podcast episode, Travis Helmig discusses his journey in the business brokering industry, highlighting the unique aspects of working with local businesses and the opportunities available in this niche market. He shares insights on the strengths and weaknesses of being a business broker, the challenges of raising awareness about the profession, and the future goals for his company, BizBroker Plus. The conversation emphasizes the importance of problem-solving and supporting local business owners in their transition to selling their businesses.
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TRAVIS HELMIG (00:00)
And we just started Chat GPT and all the stats you can possibly think about. And so I go, okay, how many real estate agents are there in the US? Well, there’s 1.6 million. Great. How many business brokers?9,000. And I was like, wait, that can’t be like in Texas, like in Austin? No, in all of the US. And so then we started going just down that rabbit hole of all that. And it honestly sounded, it was really one of those too good to be true kind of moments of where we’re like, why hasn’t anyone, why aren’t, why isn’t everyone doing this?
Erika (02:04)
Hey everyone, welcome to the Real Estate Pros Podcast. I’m your host, Erika. And today I’m joined by Travis Helmig of BizBroke. He is shaking things up in the real estate and business brokerage world. It’s awesome to have you on the show, Travis.TRAVIS HELMIG (02:20)
Thank you very much for having me. I appreciate it. How are you doing, Erika?Erika (02:24)
I’m doing great and I’m really excited about what we’re going to talk about today because what you’re doing is a little bit different and I see that as a strength and an amazing opportunity for our listeners. first, Travis, can you share more about your story, how you got involved in real estate, how you found business brokering?TRAVIS HELMIG (02:26)
Good.Yeah, actually, I’ve been a real estate agent for about 10 years and ⁓ I was doing the grind. Obviously, the market’s amazing right now, so ⁓ everyone’s just loving this market. So ⁓ I think last year, it about a year and a half ago, ⁓ I actually had a client. It was really funny because I had a client and we were closing on a home in Houston and…
you know, you’re having these conversations. I was like, you know, you’re buying this million dollar home, like, what do you do for a living? She’s like, I’m a business broker and I’ve been in the business for 10 years and I was like, I have no idea what that is. Like, what do you do? You like sell pizza shops? Like, what do you do? And so she, it was literally a nine month conversation of her being like, you should look into this. And so I was doing my own research on it. ⁓
But the stats were overwhelming. so eventually me and my business partner, we actually drove to Houston. It was so funny because we drove to Houston going, okay, we’re gonna go take this course. And we kind of overtook the course. There was like five people in it, five or six people. And we were just like, okay, I gotta do this in a day. It was a two day course and everyone left and we basically just stayed all night and we’re just like talking about it.
And so we’re like, this opportunity is absolutely insane. And so the cool part is, is we started driving back home from Houston. I live in Austin, Texas. So we had a good drive, it about three hours.
And we just started Chat GPT and all the stats you can possibly think about. And so I go, okay, how many real estate agents are there in the US? Well, there’s 1.6 million. Great. How many business brokers?
9,000. And I was like, wait, that can’t be like in Texas, like in Austin? No, in all of the US. And so then we started going just down that rabbit hole of all that. And it honestly sounded, it was really one of those too good to be true kind of moments of where we’re like, why hasn’t anyone, why aren’t, why isn’t everyone doing this?
I mean we realized later on why everyone, because it’s not super easy, it’s got a learning curve, but that’s where we kind of took off and then we created BizBroker Plus, which basically we are a Main Street only business brokering firm. And we help every, we help small businesses, so ⁓ five million and below. And so the goal, the reason that we do that, I would love to take more than five million.
But we’re really trying to stay within our niche and help the people of Main Street because there was over 500,000 small businesses that closed last year.
And so they didn’t have to. There’s so many people that are looking to buy a business. And so we felt that there was such a great opportunity just to help local businesses. mean, I’m a real estate agent, so I’m local, right? So we, that’s who we deal with. So, you know, mom and pop shops, ⁓ auto pizza shops, coffee shops, anything you can think of it. If like, if it’s a local businesses, that’s who we help. So about a year and a half, we’re about, ⁓ currently today we have about 1.5
$5
million in pending commissions ⁓ because the commission amount is 15 % commission. So that was the other eye opening is that, know, real estate, you’re technically making about 3 % commission. And so you’re making 15 % commission on a deal. And so, you know, you do a million dollar deal, you’re making 150 grand on that. And usually you’re running both sides. So the buyer and the seller side. So.
I’m telling you the opportunities for us just kind of hit us in the face and we were like 100 miles an hour at that point. And so now we’re in seven states, we have about 20 brokers and we’re just loving this space because we were helping so many local business owners that otherwise wouldn’t have anyone in their corner.
Erika (07:22)
Yeah, yeah, wow. That’s quite a journey. And ⁓ I know you said a lot of people aren’t that familiar with business brokering. So when you’re working with someone, whether it’s a buyer or a seller, what kind of misconceptions are you usually seeing as you’re working on these deals?TRAVIS HELMIG (07:43)
⁓ With a buyer and seller, ⁓ you know, I think with sellers, I don’t think there’s like, I would hard to say like misconceptions. think what’s sellers the challenge that we’ve seen with sellers so much is that, especially I would say for a sell by owner, ⁓ because they feel like they have to, because they don’t have anyone else out there to support them. So they feel like it’s a lot, you know, you just got to list your business. ButIt’s like this. It’s like if this was the real estate side of it, this would be the equivalent.
If you wanted to sell your own house, but yet you had a full-time house of, you know, bed and breakfast, people were there all day long and you had to perform, but yet you still had to sell your house at the same time. So with a business, you actually have to continue to work in your business while selling it. And that becomes the most challenging thing for them because one side has to give. So, you you’re not gonna either have the resources to do
you’re
gonna have the time to call the people back. They’re gonna ask a lot of questions. You have to have good documents. And so what we found is that many of the for sale by owners that we’ve actually brought on, when we called them they were like, thank you Jesus. Because they were done. Like they could not do it themselves and they were pulling their hair out. And so I would say I’m not gonna say this because I’m in real estate. This would be really bad if I said this but that…
You should not never not hire a real estate agent. I’m to put that clear. You should hire a real estate agent every time. But to sell your house is so much easier by yourself than to sell a business by yourself. It’s way more complicated. And I would say that the sad part is there are a lot of
sellers and business owners that are like, I have no one to help. So they’re forced to do it. Real estate. You’re not really forced to sell your own house. There’s a million real estate agents. Just go throw a rock. You’ll hit one. Right. But I think the misconception, ⁓ just to go back is that selling businesses is not easy, but
there and there’s nobody there to help them. So if you’re a business owner and you’re ever thinking about selling 70 % of all business owners, this is a stat that actually just came out this year. 70 % of all local business owners do not have an exit strategy.
So that means you don’t have anything in place, you have no idea what you’re doing, and then they wanna go sell their business, and then you’re gonna have a million questions by a buyer that’s wanting to sell it, and they’re just gonna walk away because you can’t answer all those questions, because you’re not prepared to do it. So I think the biggest thing is, it’s for sellers, please get help, and someone’s out there to help you, so you don’t have to do it alone.
Erika (11:07)
Yeah, yeah, if you know if someone is thinking about exiting their their business, you know, where where should they start it, you know, being a broker, do you try to get involved early in the process? Or is there you know, is there some homework that they they need to do before it makes sense?TRAVIS HELMIG (11:25)
Yeah, that’s such a great question ⁓ because you don’t want to wait. For one, getting your exit strategy is really preparing your business currently today to actually succeed. So when we say exit strategy, it’s not just, what’s your valuation? It’s really getting your standard operating procedures in place. I always call it your business in a box. What a buyer wants is everything that you have handed over to them and saying, here is everything.What happens is nothing, they have no systems, they have no operations, they don’t even know the passcodes to their own systems that they’re using. And so the first step is if you’re thinking about selling at any point, sit down with an exit strategy. So business brokers are gonna be the people that are gonna actually, what we do is we’re going to put it up for sale.
But we do, and I help people with this all the time, as far as just doing exit strategy, opposed to just wanting to sell it. if you do need, and you’re like, hey, in the next two or three years, or even the next five years, or if you’re like, hey, eventually I do wanna sell, where should I start?
you can contact us at bizbrokerplus.com and we can set you up with an exit strategy. they’re not gonna try, the nice thing about this, they’re not gonna try to get you to sell your business. That’s not their job. you think of like a surgeon wants to cut, right? A business broker wants to broker a deal, right?
exit strategy people want to say, hey, we want to prep your business. They’re not going to be focused on marketing your business for sale. They’re not going to be focused on, they’re going to say, hey, listen, we want to get your business. And how does that help you today?
Well, it’s going to help a business owner because if you have systems and processes that you never had and you have all of this clear cut, I worked with somebody this last week. They’ve been business for three years and they don’t even have core values. So they don’t even know what their business stands for. And so it’s little things like that, which how are you going to articulate it to a new employee? Hey, here’s what we stand for. So it’s really kind of getting to the point that we can actually make a business in a box that eventually when you do want to sell, then it’s just calling us and say, Hey, I think I’m
ready to sell and then you’re like cool we already have everything dialed in and then you can imagine if you went to business A and they didn’t have that and then you went to business B that had everything dialed in and you’re gonna put a dollar amount on that which one would you pay more for?
I mean, it’s pretty obvious. You pay the one that all you have to do is step through the doors and then follow a checklist and it’s all done for you. So we deal with that all the time. So if anybody ever needs that, we love helping with exit strategy, but it won’t be a business broker. It’s a completely separate step, but you guys can reach out to us. our goal is to help local businesses.
Erika (14:20)
that’s really great for the agents who are interested in adding being a business brokerage to their services. What’s the first thing that they should know?TRAVIS HELMIG (15:13)
It’s different. ⁓ So we’ve, you know, we’ve walked through this being me being a real estate agent. I was a mortgage lender also. So I say that saying that I’ve worked with numbers.my P &Ls, you work with companies to try to figure out, know, somebody that owns a company and wants to buy a house, you’re looking at those documents, making sure that they can qualify, right? That’s what you’re looking at. So it’s very, you can shift and move to that. So I always like to say the difference in a business broker and a real estate agent is, real estate agents focus on square foot price and we focus on profit.
And so those are two completely different things that you have to be able to understand. So there’s a learning curve when it comes to becoming a business broker. Now I’ll tell you, it’s not, you can do it. We train people, we have a Main Street Business Brokering Certification, and we have teams that you can jump on ⁓ that will guide you and mentors that can teach you. So if that’s something that you wanna do, that you can totally do that. ⁓
The one thing I would say is what we see with a lot of real estate agents is not so much becoming a business broker. Yeah, the 15 % commission is, looks really nice. But there’s a lot of work that goes into that is to being able to do that confidently.
So a lot of our real estate agents that we know just become referral agents. And we basically teach them how to say one more question. That’s what we say. And I was really surprised because I actually have a couple daycares that are about ready to go on the market. A couple other businesses that we’ve helped buyers and sellers with that were my clients from the past that I didn’t even really, I didn’t even talk about. I was like, cool, you own a daycare, that’s really great. And then end a conversation.
because I didn’t know what’s the next step. So we really like to give everyone the next step and it’s really, I like to call it, it’s one more question can make you $20,000 or more because we give 20 % referral fee ⁓ out. So it’s really easy. If you go to a listing appointment and you’re having a conversation, which we all do, why are you selling? I’m gonna retire.
Great, where you all going? Well, we’re moving to Florida because that’s closer to family. We’re moving to the beach, whatever it is. Then the next question, so what do you guys, what’d you do for a living? And then they say any business, bakery, coffee shop, anything that you can think of, one question is, well, what are you doing with that business since you’re retiring or since you’re moving? And then you just hand it over to us. You can go to bizbrokerplus.com.
You put in there, you’ll see referral agent right at the navigation. You put their information, your information, and we will always call you first, because we want to know the most about your client, and we want to know you. so that, all right there, can earn you 20%. So if it’s a million dollar transaction, that’s $150,000, 20 % of that, it’s a lot of money, okay? You’re making a lot of money off of that. So equivalent is, you’re basically,
to sell a $500, $600,000 house, you’ll earn the same amount of commission just by sending that lead over, which is crazy. So I would say, if you really want to be a business broker, we’ll help you, we’ll guide you, we have mentors, we can do that. But if you’re like, just, I think this is really great and I have clients and just that one more question can, you know, even if you did a couple a year, imagine, you know, 40, 60, 80, $100,000 extra year just by referring them out.
then then a lot of people, would say a lot of real estate agents just do that, especially the high producing ones. We have, you know, some agents that are getting started that were like, Hey, I really just want to jump into it. But if you’re, if you’re doing really well in real estate, I tell people all this time, I have a couple of real estate agents that have been, you know, they’re closing 40, 50 deals a year. Like, I think I want to dive into business broker. And I’m like, do not do that. Your business is doing so great. Don’t change gears. Cause you really have to take this on full time. It’s a, it’s a, it’s a huge learning curve. And so I would say, Hey, listen,
when your business starts collapsing, come over here. But until then, just refer us business. And that’s worked so great just by asking that one more question.
Erika (19:31)
Yeah, yeah, that’s beenyou know, all the information here that you’ve shared has been so great and helpful, Travis, for our listeners here who want to connect, reach out, learn more. What’s the best way for them to reach you?
TRAVIS HELMIG (19:49)
Yeah, the best way to reach us is really just to go to bizbrokerplus.com ⁓ and check out, we have a lot of resources. So even if you’re kind of, hey, I just want to learn more about it. We have so many resources there. If you want to connect with us and you want to learn more about potentially being a business broker, can just join the team. You fill out the form, we’ll reach out to you and we’ll basically kind of do an interview and just ask you, of let you know the whole, we want to give you the landscape of what it looks like to be a business broker.and see if it’s a good fit. Happens all the time. And then ⁓ we have some real estate agents go, actually, no, I don’t want to do that. Sounds like a lot. And then we say, cool, let’s just set you up with our referral program. And you can do that. And we also, we do do live videos and live coaching and things like that with our, we always tell real estate agents, hey, come, just learn.
learn a little bit. Just come and like just listen to the conversations because for one selling businesses are awesome because you get totally different businesses because you got to think selling something like a product is different than selling coffee. like selling an automotive shop is going to be different than selling a liquor store right. It’s they’re completely different so it’s not apples to apples. It’s usually apples to oranges and almost every there’s so many different niches. So if you’re wanting to learn more I would just go to bizbrokerplus.com you can
and get all the information, come join us on one of our meetups and just learn kind of what’s going on in the business realm and then you can kind of take it from there. I knowledge is power and that’s our goal for business owners and for real estate agents or anyone that’s thinking about ⁓ becoming a business broker or learning more about it.
Erika (21:31)
Yeah, well, Travis, you’re clearly building something that’s just not about doing those deals. You know, you’re looking to ⁓ really impact others through ⁓ these businesses. Thanks so much for being here and sharing your journey with us.TRAVIS HELMIG (21:45)
Yeah, thanks, Erika. I appreciate having to do it again sometime.Erika (21:49)
Yeah. And for our listeners, if you got value from this episode, make sure that you’re subscribed to the Real Estate Pros podcast. We’ve got more conversations lined up with pros like Travis who are out there building fantastic businesses. We’ll see you on the next
