So, thinking about exit strategy, I did a search and read a lot of old threads on the topic. It seems that most of our businesses aren't really worth anything when sold, unless there's tons of recurring revenue, alarm contracts, etc. So what is everyone's plan for when you retire, or just want out?

The topic has been heavy on my mind lately. I feel like Im stuck in this business, rather than being free from the yoke of working for someone else. When I opened this particular shop, it was my intention to pass it on to my son. He has decided to pursue a culinary career, and I'm certainly not upset by that.

As I'm reaching a level of burnout that seems to really be leading me towards just altogether wanting out and away from this industry, I'm realizing that there's no real value in selling the company. Worse, due to unfortunate circumstances a few years ago, my retirement savings was pretty much wiped out, so knowing I can't really make up for it by selling out just makes me all that much more bitter about it. I know the loss of my retirement savings is probably unique to me, but surely some of you have had to change your plans due to unforeseen circumstances.

But I still have concern for what happens to my customers if I close up, and if I really want out before official retirement, I certainly don't want to abandon clients. The other shop in the area is so hated by the majority of my clients that I can't really just pass them along.

I almost think my only option is to double down, increase business to the point where I have to bring on some staff, get them up to the point that they can run it without me, and just go on extended vacation and only pop in to check on things. But that runs counter to the current burnout.

So, what is everyone's "plan" once you get too old/tired/whatever to keep doing this? I really wasn't thinking about anything but working until I die when I started this business, and now I just want to be able to retire and drive around the country with a camper, kayaks and rafts, and a mountain bike and never see another broken component again.

*Disclaimer:
This largely applies to all the really small, 1-3 person shops.

This is one of the worst industries to work in these days IMO.

In order to be good at it, we have to wear so many hats and be experts in each of the fields. So many dealers (including many on here) just can't do that or even care to be an expert in anything but one thing. The amount of training, research, and test equipment we must own (again if we are good & serious), is ridiculous versus the amount of money we make.

I recently saw the beginning of that movie 'Pixels' with Adam Sandler. Didn't watch it but saw where an A/V installer was basically portrayed as no more sophisticated or intelligent as the kid working at McDonalds. Very sad, made me angry, and realized that this is the sentiment most people have towards this trade these days.

After 28 years now working in this industry, I have not $1 saved for retirement. Not much of anything else to show for it either.
Obviously others have done much better than me, especially if they really focused on the business side of things and concentrated on just making money. But I know of no one that was gotten rich or 'well to do' by working in this industry.

Most likely outcome is work till death. If you can find ANYTHING else to do for a living, I suggest you desperately try and find it now. Unlikely things are going to ever get better.

A system was described in the movie "The Italian Job" as being done by some kid, costing $30,000, and never working right. In reality, I did the real system for the director of that movie. It cost over $60,000. And it always worked.

Apparently there was some reason to denigrate the installer.

This. This is literally, exactly how I feel. Don't get me wrong, I still do have several moments where I really love this, but they don't outweigh the stress, aggravation, and struggle. I'm definitely in a lousy market, too, which makes things a little more of a pill to swallow.

And that's one of the problems. I put so much time and effort into being good at what I do, there's little time to deal with actually running a business. I tried to take some time this summer to enjoy having my son for a few weeks before he goes back to college, and I'm still trying to catch up from it. And the abuse on my body doesn't help. At my age, if I'm going to hurt myself, I'd prefer doing it in a kayak or a mountain bike than hefting some 12 year old 60" plasma down from an unreasonably high fireplace mount. Hell, I've torn both rotator cuffs in the last 4 years from work.

I've been doing this for long enough that I honestly don't even know what else I COULD do for a living, but it sure would be nice to realize there's some job out there that's low stress, pays reasonably well, and doesn't require answering texts from angry clients who can't put 2 and 2 together to figure out that if both the internet is out as well as the TV signal, it's probably the cable company, and not my system.

You know what I really want to do with my life? Other than just flat out go on permanent travel? I want to get a job as a raft guide in Washington on either the Skykomish River or the Wenatchee River. But a middle aged guy with 2 kids in college and a mountain of bills can't live on a raft guide's pay in a place where a 1500 square foot, 3 bedroom house costs over $400K. I can't even do that here, where the same house costs $150K.

I guess maybe I can suck it up for a few more years, buckle down and drive myself into the ground in hopes of putting some value in the business and saving some money for an escape plan, but as burned out as I've been this year, the thought of it is really depressing.

If you have a low voltage business that is mainly commercial that does well then yes it can be sold for good money. If it’s residential, well good luck especially if it’s a 1-3 man operation.
Retirement, well i was saving for a bit then i got wiped out by hurricane Harvey. So i feel the pain as well.
If you can do something else then go for it. At the same time if your in a position to grow then it may be time to do so as that is the best way to make more. Just don’t grow too fast.

Despite the crappy portrayal, I have to say that that's pretty cool.

Only rarely do I find that my expertise gets lumped in with the cable guy, or other know nothings, but when it does happen, I probably take it way too personally. Like with the guy who d*cked me around for 6 months with revisions on proposals, then had Best Buy come butcher his house. I'm pretty sure I lost my main builder over that one, because I flat out told the client that if he thought Best Buy could do the caliber of work that I could, he'd be getting charged double the standard labor rate when I had to come fix it. Then I informed the builder how many code violations Best Buy committed in their "pre-wire" just to prove my point. People don't seem to realize how much time we spend on keeping up to date on education, which is so haphazard in this industry that qualifications don't seem to mean much anyway.

Hire someone and let them deal with operations. Focus on the business. Offer the person you hire a way to purchase the business over the next decade 5 years whatever.

Mostly residential, with the occasional restaurant job. I'd like to move more into commercial, if I don't walk away.

I was actually thinking of ramping up security sales, but that has its downsides, too. I don't mind only doing alarms for larger automation jobs, but if it came down to installing alarms every day, I'd rather just sell used cars or something.

Sorry that Harvey wiped you out. At least you're not alone in the "oh, crap, my retirement is gone" club. Not that that makes either of us feel better.

This is more in line with what I'd LIKE to do, but I've had 2 guys work for me in the last 6 months, and after that experience, I'm not sure I'll ever find a viable candidate here in the heart of heroin hell

Having been retired for 11 years now, I can relate to your situation.

Thankfully, I really stayed on top of the business, and socked away a nice sum of coin, since I knew that things couldn't continue as they once were.

Didn't sell the biz, due to the timing, no one had any money due to that nasty 2008 thing when most all of my competitors went belly up. But I cranked it up charged a LOT more for my services, then closed the doors to all but the very preferred clients.

Sold off most of my inventory, although I still have some stuff I'll end up throwing in the trash, and pretty much called it a day. I will still help out some of the old, nice, clients, but will still charge an arm and a leg.

Tried the same "hire someone" thing, and fund out very quick, that wasn't going to work. The youth of America doesn't want to work, they just want paid for showing up.

I feel for you. It's a lot worse than before I got out.

i walked away in 2012 and have never looked back... i love the av business, but i did not want to make the changes needed to compete with the box companies and the 100 hange and bangs. i wanted to be focused on quality and the market went to quantity.

things are looking better, and i may actually get to retire at my funeral luncheon.

This is a great thread and it should serve as a cautionary tale. If you think your rates are cheap to reasonable, raise your hourly rate $10-$20/hr.

If you're tired of getting phone calls from cheapos...raise your rates.

The best thing we ever did for our business was to raise our rates. In our case, I completely believe that our level of service is absolutely worth what we charge our clients.

Ask yourself "Is it more important for customers to get a good deal or for me to retire comfortably at some point?" You should charge enough to keep yourself in business and to afford a good lifestyle now and in the future.

Why not try raising your rates? Most people who are really burned out, are working very hard and don’t have much to show for it. If you raised your rates 25 to 50%, you could weed out some cheap customers, work less, and have the same take-home.

Or, you could work about the same number of hours, and have a whole lot more to save.

I am guessing that 10 times the number of businesses go under for charging too little, versus being too expensive.

I'm going through the exact same thing right now. I'm 49, have owned my own company for 15 years now, no real retirement, what I had got wiped out in the 2008-2010 downturn. I'm burnt out on this industry and honestly if I never hung another TV I'd die a happy man.

I've been rocking business wise for the last 3 years doing mostly larger commercial access control and camera systems with the random residential job thrown in. I'm done with residential, yes I charge up the rear for it and the systems I work on average in the lower 6 figure range. Tired of being blamed for service provider issues such as Amazon Prime "Insufficient Bandwith" errors when the client has a 200Mb internet connection, tired of being called on Friday evening because Xfinity internet or cable is down.. and so on and so on. The last 3 years I've experimented with using subs that I know to do some of my installation work and I pretty much always need to go over everything they do and fix half of it. I tried using reps to do design work for me as they always offer it up only to find on a recent commercial Lutron job that the rep didn't bother to read anything on the prints and completey F'd the entire design up so I ended up spending all of he time on it fixing his mistakes that I would have spent doing it in the first place. Tried using my accountant to do more of the day to day invoicing stuff which worked for entering bills and payments but I still have to work with them to put together invoices to make sure everything gets billed for correctly.

In the end, I have about $490K in 3 commercial projects going on right now. When they are done some time mid next year I'm done. Maybe I'll get a job at one of the ski resorts as a bartender, who knows.

I'm playing hooky tomorrow and going Elk hunting.. at least my cell phone doesn't work up on the mountain.

Raising rates is very much a geographical thing. Some people simply can NOT raise their rates anymore than they have, if they want to work at all.

Why do you think I have so much time on my hands to test things, review things, etc. I spend the majority of my time dealing with unrelated things. Some weeks I might get real busy and put more than 40-50 hours in. But most of the time, I can go all week without doing anything that is billable hours or working on anything job related.
I'm at $100 per hour and at this price around here, I constantly have customers walking away "My price is crazy!". F^ them, I'm not working for less and dealing with their BS!

Oh Tom,
That oscilloscope I got from you many, many years ago finally broke. The vertical deflection still works but no horizontal sweep. Probably an easy fix but a new one just makes so much more sense. It was way past its time :)