When looking to purchase another firm, a SWOT analysis is a critical step in evaluating your firm’s and your market’s strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats. Dear Dan, I recently bought a funeral home in the next town. I think I did everything right. For years, I clipped your articles, and they helped prepare me for the big purchase. I got a business valuation (from a competitor of yours), secured financing by using my existing real estate and the new real estate, and got a Covenant Not to Compete (CNC) with the owner. I assigned the key man who had been there to a CNC as part of his employment agreement and am paying him an extra $10,000 a year for 10 years to promise not to compete. Everything was locked up tight at closing. Since the closing, however, a new […]