If I had been in that meeting, I would not have said not to sell
He reshares his own April 27 post about Cajuína São Geraldo, the cashew soft drink maker from Juazeiro do Norte, in Ceará, that turned down acquisition offers from multinationals, and adds the questions he would ask as a Board member.
Board members, this text is for us!!!
If I had been in that meeting, I would not have said not to sell. I would have asked three questions.
The offer arrived. The number was real. The multinational had distribution, capital and scale to make sense on paper.
The São Geraldo family was facing a decision most entrepreneurs do not resist.
My job at that moment would not be to recommend. It would be to force clarity before the financial value anesthetized what was really at stake.
The three questions that make an offer reveal its true size:
• What are they buying that they cannot build? If the answer is identity, their price is wrong.
• What will you do afterwards? If there is no clear answer, the sale solves the present and compromises the future.
• Who inherits the decision? A family business carries generations. Selling means answering for people who have not yet sat at this table.
São Geraldo answered all three without needing a Board member. And stayed.
My role is not to say what to do. It is to make sure the decision is made with the right questions on the table.
"This is not an opinion formed in a classroom or in books. It is the view of someone who was directly involved in the sale of his own family's company."
Do not read it superficially. Read it with the weight of someone who made, and sustained, that decision in practice.
Also published on LinkedIn, where the conversation continues in the comments.
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