Speaking The Same Language

For the Greater Good of Omaha

A DEAL 30 YEARS IN THE MAKING by Stefanie Baguian

Courtesy: AIM Institute

The AIM institute was started almost 30 years ago to address a shortage of tech talent in the Omaha metro. Careerlink started as one of a variety of projects to create funding for the greater good of the AIM Institute's mission. At a time when most job postings were merely in newspapers, the AIM Institute created Careerlink as one of the first online platforms to search and apply for jobs.

As Careerlink became financially successful, the Board of Directors at the AIM Institute shifted their goals in a new direction, wanting to focus more on their not-for-profit missions and their educational programs. Unfortunately, Careerlink took away the focus from the main missions. They decided that Careerlink needed to stand on its own. “Careerlink itself wasn’t perfectly aligned with our mission,” said Levi Thiele, the Vice President of Program and Resource Development at AIM. “We were also growing more sustainable funding sources for mission related activities, so the board's advice was to sell Careerlink off, take the proceeds from the sale, and invest in growing mission related services.”

A perfect example of a blue-sky business, Careerlink carries a minimal amount of physical assets and really focuses on the services they provide. “We have trademarks that go along with it,” said Thiele. “We have the intellectual properties, we have the platforms and we have all the contracts with customers, so that’s really what we were selling.

It might seem to be a rare moment in a business’s course when they realize that only a portion of a business needs to be sold and not the entire business. Business owners who have different divisions may not realize that this is an option for them if they are not willing or ready to sell off the whole business.

The Board of Directors reached out to a plethora of brokers, had phone calls and heard pitches. After a referral from the Vistage Network, they ultimately met with Cortney Sells, President of The Firm Advisory.

Deal Review: Careerlink

• Location: Omaha, NE • Cash Flow: $927,113 • Loan Type: SBA • Number of Employees: 10 • Client Base: Small to large businesses looking to acquire employees, individual job seekers • Website: www.careerlink.com

BLUE SKY Bliss

“Cortney’s [pitch] was just the most persuasive and got us the most excited,” said Thiele. “She has a lot of energy and enthusiasm and she spoke very knowledgeably about carving out a piece of a business and doing that with as little disruption as possible to the rest of the business and that’s something that was important to us. It wasn’t like we were selling our entire company. It was a carveout.” Through The Firm’s process, they met with several prospective buyers. All coming from a national level, the buyers were anything from investment groups to staffing agencies to people who just wanted to own their own small business. In the end, a single buyer was decided upon. “There were two main reasons,” said Thiele. “The first was financial, just the deal itself, in a financial point of view, best aligned with what we were looking for and the value of the business. The second thing we were looking for: the buyer’s vision for what he wanted to do with Careerlink sounded really good to us. This particular buyer wanted to keep Careerlink running in the Omaha area. He wanted to take on all the existing employees. He had a vision for growing it more into a staffing model. All of that sounded like it would be really really good for Omaha. That was compelling to us as well.” The Firm tries to make this a smooth process and deliver an outcome that leaves both buyers and sellers feeling satisfied. “I have no experience selling businesses before,” said Thiele. “It’s not my background. It’s not something I have a lot of experience with...so what I really appreciate is that we could reach out [to The Firm] with a lot of questions, like newby level questions, just because we didn’t understand the process. No one at The Firm ever made us feel stupid for asking.” Thiele offers some advice to others selling their business. “If I could go back and do it again, one thing that I would have done differently, I would have spent more time prepping for the carveout before we ever put the business on the market,” said Thiele. “I think what happened in our case, we weren’t ready for a lot of the questions. We hadn’t split out some of our books and our processes in a way that made them easily shareable when we started getting down the road with some of the potential buyers. I think it made some of the process drag out longer than it should have.” As Careerlink transitions away from AIM and starts a new chapter, that doesn’t mean it will not be remembered at the AIM Institute. “Because it serves so many customers across the region, I think I’ll miss having that connection to such a wide audience,” said Thiele. “Because oftentimes, it did provide us the opportunities to get our not-for-profit mission in front of that wider audience.” •THE FIRM • Sale Price: $2,770,000 • Asset Value: $900,000 • Blue Sky Value: $1,187,000 • Key Intangible Assets: • Brand Recognition • Great Reputation • Ready for Expansion "We have the trademarks that go along with it. We have the platforms and we have all the contracts with customers... that's what we were selling." Levi Thiele