Any entrepreneur who contemplates buying or selling a business or who wonders what their company might be worth should read "What Every Business Owner Should Know About Valuing Their Business" by professional business valuation experts Stanley Feldman, Timothy Sullivan, and Roger Winsby.

Feldman, Sullivan, and Winsby tell us that most small businesses are too small to be sold for anything more than net asset value. We learn that of the 24.5 million businesses in the U.S., 17.1 million are owned by only one or two people and are often part-time endeavors operated from home.

These ultra-small businesses typically have zero value as a going concern, because they are often highly dependent upon the owner's labor and they have limited income potential. These ultra-small businesses have little "goodwill" value beyond the value of their net assets.

Small businesses with several employees and an established client base often have value as a going concern. These companies often sell for more than net asset value. The amount paid above the net asset value is called "goodwill."

Because buying or selling a company is probably the biggest financial decision you'll ever make, you should understand the valuation process and consider utilizing the assistance of professional business appraisers. The authors tell us that professional business appraisal is costly, often ranging from $5,000 to $25,000 to appraise a company.

Using several case studies, Feldman, Sullivan, and Winsby discuss the main business valuation methods used today, including:

1) Valuation based upon earnings, which typically involves adjusting reported earnings appropriately and determining a proper industry-specific multiple of earnings for which the business should sell. Often, "similar" businesses are examined to see the valuations given to those companies.

2) Valuation based upon revenue, which usually involves determining an appropriate number that is multiplied by the company's revenue to determine company value.

3) Valuation based upon discounted cash flow, which involves estimating the future stream of free cash flow the business is expected to provide and then discounting this stream of cash flow to the present. Sometimes, the basic discounted cash flow calculation is further adjusted to allow for a small company's lack of liquidity or other factors.

Feldman, Sullivan, and Winsby write: "There is a growing consensus among professional valuation experts that the discounted cash flow method produces the most accurate valuation results for an ongoing, established business if there are no current transactions of very comparable businesses."

"What Every Business Owner Should Know About Valuing Their Business" shows the valuation of several specific businesses, including an insurance agency, an environmental consulting business, a law firm, and a metal fabrication company.

Each case study provides a current tax return for the business (one company is a C-corporation; two are S-corporations; and one is a partnership), and each company valuation demonstrates several aspects about the valuation of different types of businesses.

For example, for O'Toole Insurance Agency, we learn several things:

1) An important part of valuation is convincing the other party that there is a reasonableness to your valuation.

2) Large expenses can be incurred in valuing a business and preparing it for a sale. In one failed transaction, the buyer and seller collectively spent $44,880 in accounting, appraisal, and legal fees, and, in the end, the deal fell through.

3) Sometimes, it's important to separate different parts of a company for valuation purposes. O'Toole Insurance Agency owned its building and rented space to other occupants. If the potential buyer only wished to purchase the insurance business, the insurance business would need to be separately valued from the property and rental business. Also, because the new agency, sans building ownership, would need to pay rent, the insurance company earnings would need to be lowered by the new rental expense.

4) Discretionary expenses and "missing" expenses must be examined, and adjustments might need to be made to reported earnings when valuing the company. Feldman, Sullivan, and Winsby point out that many business owners incorporate discretionary expenses into their business in an attempt to lower taxation. These expenses reduce taxable income, but can be eliminated without compromising the earnings power of the company. (Some buyers might be willing to accept that the true earnings of the company are higher than taxable earnings due to these discretionary expenses, thus increasing the true value of the business.)

Feldman, Sullivan, and Winsby include a solid chapter about maximizing the value of a business. The authors say business owners planning for the sale of their businesses must start thinking less about minimizing taxes and more about maximizing company value. Over a period of several years, owners should prepare for the eventual sale of their company by making their operations more transparent and disentangling personal expenses from business expenses.

Suppose, for example, an entrepreneur incorporates $30,000 in discretionary expenses in his business, including expensive club memberships, that really aren't necessary business expenses. Assume these "expenses" generate little or no added sales and don't really help customer retention nor benefit non-owner employees. If the business sells for eight times earnings and we use the taxable earnings for valuation, this $30,000 in discretionary expenses will reduce the company valuation by $240,000.

Feldman, Sullivan, and Winsby write: "A dollar saved on taxes can cost $$$ in lost value."

The authors also discuss the possibility that expenses the owner claims are "discretionary" are, in fact, necessary. For example, the club memberships may be crucial to meeting potential clients. The authors tell us that a new owner who does less networking might need to increase advertising expense appropriately. And, thus, it's useful to examine the advertising expenses of similar companies.

"What Every Business Owner Should Know About Valuing Their Business" discusses other "life business events" such as divorce, death, transition planning, and portfolio diversification. There is also an excellent discussion of the different types of business structures, such as S-corporations and C-corporations.

Overall, I highly recommend "What Every Business Owner Should Know About Valuing Their Business" to entrepreneurs buying or selling a business.

Peter Hupalo, Author of "How To Start And Run Your Own Corporation: S-Corporations For Small Business Owners"

I found this book to be logical and informative about many matters that I've had trouble getting good information about. We small business people may often find ourselves going it alone, wandering about in the wilderness, so to speak.

This book offers education and guidance about matters very relevant to the management of one's business in order to make it more profitable and ultimately more valuable at the time of sale. The ramifications of various decisions about what to include as tax deductible necessities are spelled out. I recognized how many times my desire to minimize my taxes had driven my decisions rather than looking at the larger picture--my need for an adequate retirement income. This is an even bigger issue for someone who hopes to ultimately sell their business to fund their retirement than for me as a professional practitioner.

I especially liked the fact that the authors explained the various methods of business valuation and their underlying assumptions. They spelled out the pros and cons of each so that they could be selected for appropriateness as well as weighted if they were all combined to provide a ballpark figure.

The examples were detailed, varied, and interesting. They seemed very realistic. They were effective at illustrating various points the authors wished to make. While this book is targeted more to owners and sellers, it would be very beneficial for any potential business buyers to read. It makes clear many areas to be probed so that there are not unpleasant surprises later on.

... The book is quite inexpensive and the valuation service, although it sounds expensive at ... is inexpensive and fast compared to any other alternatives. The ways in which the information the valuation process yields can be used are amply demonstrated in the various examples. The authors are also available for consultation as part of the package and there are options to tailor services to meet a specific legal need.

This book has the potential to save a business owner a tremendous amount of money if he or she plans to maximize the value of their business for 3-5 years prior to a projected sale, rather than manage their business in their usual way. It's a great resource to help business owners (and/or their families)prepare for transitions! Buy it and read it if you are a small business owner now or are considering becoming one!

I just picked up a copy of this book because I needed to know the value of a family business. I thought I could just pick a formula and presto that would be the number. After reading this book, and going over the case studies, I now know differently. There is a lot more involved than randomly assigning a value to your company. And this book showed me how. Its straight forward approach and readability will now let me see what I need to do in order to maximize the value of the company. Thanks for the tips!

There are so many books written about Kant that one could almost emend the statement, "Of the making of books, there is no end" to "Of the making of books on Kant, there is no end." Kant is not merely studied, he is studied in enormous depth and with a passion and meticulousness reserved for few philosophers in history. When I was working on my Ph.D. in philosophy, even though I had read dozens of books on Kant, and was planning on spending half of my doctoral thesis on aspects of his moral thought, I would never have dreamed, in academic parlance, of describing myself as a Kant "specialist." I remained hesitant to even acknowledge myself as "competent" in Kant's ethics.

Of all the books I read on Kant's ethics, I found this one to be the best at providing an overview of Kant's moral thought and how it related to his work as a whole. Sullivan resists the widespread tendency to subdivide Kant. There are Kant scholars who expend all their efforts on one aspect of Kant's philosophy, with little effort to explain the connections with the rest of his work or to show how the two interrelate and, in fact, require one another. Moreover, even scholars working with Kant's moral theory oftentimes focus on one or two or perhaps three texts to the exclusion of the rest of his work, to the point of ignoring completely what Kant has to say about ethics in some of his works less directly concerned with moral philosophy. For instance, it is impossible to understand Kant's views about the demands of the moral law if one does not also understand his thinking about immortality. A larger number of Kant scholars have attempted to understand his ethical thought with no reference to his religious philosophy, but this isn't understanding Kant so much as preparing a fully secularized version of Kant (in fact, Kant is pretty secular even after brining all his religious beliefs to bear, but that is a separate issue).

Sullivan is marvelous at taking a particular issue in Kant, and then discussing it across a variety of texts, sometimes texts that even specialists ignore. His work is primarily integrative and synthetic, although there is also a strong analytical strain. If I were to teach a course on Kant's ethics, this is the book I would use as a secondary source. If I were taking a course on Kant's ethics, this is the book I would rely on most, apart from Kant's own writings. Advanced students and scholars will argue with many aspects of Sullivan's exposition, but no book on Kant enjoys universal approbation. But I question whether anyone studying Kant's work for the first time or trying to study his moral thought as a whole will find a more helpful book than this. It is to be recommended for its breadth, its comprehensiveness, and its clarity.

Microwave Radar by Roger Sullivan is a very comprehensive text that covers a breadth of topics from the basic through current research trends. The coverage of many important radar topics separates this book from all others, including the classic Introduction to Radar Systems by Skolnik. These topics include imaging radar; target recognition; medium / high PRF pulse Doppler radar (including multiple PRF waveforms and the use of the Chinese Remainder Theorem); space-time adaptive processing; and bistatic radar. I would recommend this text for the new radar student as well as the practicing engineer.

The subject book is a "must have" for the practicing radar engineer. It provides an excellent summary of virtually all major topics in radar signal processing: basic techniques, bearing estimation, ISAR, theory of SAR processing, super-resolution, target recognition, pulse-Doppler/MTI and STAP! Topics are covered in a clear, in-depth manner. Dr. Sullivan's expertise shines in the middle chapters of the book covering imaging radar; I enjoyed the extensive treatment of current topics, especially the discussion on SAR super-resolution and target ID. Additionally, Dr. Sullivan's ability to relate "book topics" to real-world sensor applications is a big plus.

This is a comprehensive look at imaging radar, by a professional who has developed and deployed SAR systems. Good source book with state of the art references on such subjects as ISAR and STAP (clutter reduction) processing. Much of the last third of the book on specialized topics is derived from government-funded radar (SAR, GMTI, and SAIP target recognition ) research, such as the Global Hawk UAV SAR. Thus, as a sourcebook for working engineers in the defense reconnaissance community it is more practical than a standard academic textbook.