The Day I Sold My Legacy to the Highest Bidder: 5 lessons I wish I had learned before I signed
- Aaron Marcum
- 11 hours ago
- 3 min read
In 2002, I started Arbor Home Care with a vision and very little else.
No playbook. No road map. Just a deep belief that home care, done right, could genuinely change lives.
Over the next seven years, Arbor grew to become the largest private pay home care agency in Utah. Sub-30% caregiver turnover, unheard of then, still impressive now. We were the top-rated agency by Pinnacle Quality Insights (a company later acquired by Home Care Pulse, but that's a story for another day 😄). Our own clients were our single biggest source of new revenue. Recruiting was at an all-time high. We even sponsored our local PBS station.
By every measure, we were at our peak.
So in 2009, I sold.
I sold to pursue a new vision, building Home Care Pulse and changing how data and benchmarking worked across the industry. I believed I was leaving at the right time, on the right terms, with the right momentum. I was proud of what I was handing off.
Within three years, Arbor no longer existed.
The company that acquired us stopped focusing on the people. My identity as the founder was quietly erased. I had a 90-day retainer with the new ownership team and never received a single call. Not one. The only reason the agency lasted as long as it did was because of three strong leaders I'd left behind. But one by one, they all left. The culture became toxic. And eventually, the agency folded.
Here's the hard truth I've had to sit with ever since: it wasn't their fault. It was mine.
I had four potential buyers. At least one, maybe two, were better cultural and operational fits for what I'd built. But I went with the one who offered the most money. I didn't do my homework. I didn't vet the buyers. I didn't even stop to ask myself what kind of buyer I actually wanted.
And I paid for that in the one currency that can't be recovered: legacy.
5 Lessons I Learned the Hard Way
1. Retention is fragile in the wrong hands. Even exceptional retention metrics can be dismantled in months when the wrong leadership takes over. Culture goes well beyond a retention number, it's a living thing. It requires all-in stewardship.
2. The highest offer is sometimes not the right offer. Valuation matters. But the offer that honors your people, your systems, and your referral relationships is worth more in the long run than an extra point on the multiple. I didn't understand that in 2009.
3. Vet your buyers like you vet your caregivers. The company I sold to had a reputation in the industry. I just didn't know it, because I never asked. A few conversations with the right people would have changed everything.
4. Decide the type of buyer you want before you're in the room. Strategic buyer? Private equity? A fellow founder? Each has different goals, different timelines, and a different relationship to what you've built. If you haven't defined your ideal buyer, you'll default to the highest bidder. I did.
5. Prepare long before you're ready to sell. I've written before about why exit readiness is really about running a better agency today (see The Exit Question Every Home Care Owner Avoids). The data, the systems, the team independence, the clean financials — none of that happens in the final sprint.
6. Bonus - Track and measure the right data. The right buyer can use it for future culture building and scalable growth. Plus, it helps increase your valuation if the data shows strong trends for the future.
Everything me and my fellow co-founders have learned from our various exits, the good and the painful, is baked into Riverside Home Care and our Founders Proven Process. We've thought hard about what it means to acquire an agency in a way that honors the founder's legacy, takes care of the right people, and uses the data and culture that already exist to fuel future growth. Not every buyer thinks that way. We do.
If you're within a 3-year horizon of an exit, or even just thinking about it, I'd love to have you join me on April 2nd.
Webinar: Is Your Home Care Agency Exit-Ready? We'll walk through what buyers really look at, how to know if you're building toward the right exit, and what to do now so you don't make the mistakes I made.
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