Over a period of six years, the Bennett family, based in Atlantic Canada, sold a number of companies under its umbrella group, learning many lessons along the way.

In 2013, Cathy Bennett was elected to public office. As a Member of the Newfoundland & Labrador House of Assembly, she served in Cabinet as Minister of Finance, President of the Treasury Board, Minister Responsible for the Status of Women, and the Office of the Chief Information Officer.

For 35 years, Bennett worked with a group of McDonald’s franchise restaurants in Newfoundland - 17 years as the owner.

In March of 2020, the family sold that portion of its family business.

“We had a number of other companies including a day spa. We had an international recruitment company. We had a small construction company under a company umbrella called Bennett Group of Companies,” she said.

“We had started some of the transitions for some of the smaller companies before I went into politics. So when I finished up my public office experience we decided it was time to move on from the McDonald’s franchise after three decades. I tried to retire for a year but it didn’t go well. And then Sandpiper Ventures was created.”

She is Managing & Co-Founding Partner of Sandpiper Ventures. Among the first all-women GP venture fund firms in Canada, Sandpiper invests in women entrepreneurs who bring diverse perspectives and unique insights leading to more creative solutions to complex global and industry challenges and potential for superior financial returns.

“We’re trying to level the playing field of access to capital for women who want to create incredibly innovative companies,” said Bennett.

“We started planning in 2019 and formally incorporated in 2020.”

Bennett will be part of a roundtable discussion with entrepreneurs who have sold businesses at the Atlantic Business Transitions Forum April 9 in Halifax.

Focused on supporting start-ups Bennett is an associate fellow with the Creative Destruction Lab in Atlantic and Vancouver supporting the Mining and Oceans stream, a board member with Propel ICT, Atlantic Canada’s Virtual Accelerator. She also serves as a director with the Public Policy Forum.

Over a period of time, she was involved in the sale of about eight different companies. There were a number of different ownership structures for those companies.

“When I was an employee I watched a former owner of the franchise that I worked for try to sell his business for six years. And during that six years the value of the business declined - the morale, the employee engagement, all of that downward spiral that typically happens when somebody disengages as an owner,” said Bennett.

“I was obsessed with making sure that was not what happened in our situation. So from the beginning, the very first meeting I had with the accountant and lawyers as we were buying the franchise from this gentleman after his six-year effort trying to sell out, I told the lawyers your first job is to help me get out of it now that I got into it. So we planned right from the beginning.

“When I say planning, making sure that your people, the profitability, the balance sheet, the assets, the hard assets, are in the condition the best they can be or that you’ve reconciled that they’re not and you’re going to be okay to take that on the valuation side because it will impact the value.”

She said to do a deal it has to be win-win on both sides.

“You have to go into the discussion understanding there’s going to be gives and takes and prepare for the giving and the taking long in advance which is exactly what we did.”

With over 35 years of business leadership, her own company Bennett Group of Companies grew from a small group of service businesses to operations in commercial and industrial construction, industrial manufacturing, human resource support, service, retail, industrial supply, and real estate investments and operations.

She has served on more than two dozen private and public corporate boards with interests in real estate, natural resources, manufacturing, industrial construction, technology, and business services and banking. She is currently an Independent Board Director for Equinor Canada.

“What I see a lot is founders or small business operators who have built a bit of an empire. Some would say Bennett Group of Companies was a bit of an empire. They don’t think about each of the businesses as a single entity. That’s really important,” said Bennett. “You’ve got to maximize the value on an exit. Just think about the pieces of your business in and of themselves.

“Because sometimes the folks that can afford those are riper buyers. The bigger your business the harder it is to find sometimes a peer to peer buyer and if you can parse things up sometimes it can actually make your deals collectively earn a little bit more capital for your estate, for your family or for yourself, whatever your motive is in selling.

“Start planning early. Stick to your plan and at the end of the day know it’s going to hurt a little bit to walk away and be okay with that.”

(Mario Toneguzzi is a veteran of the media industry for more than 40 years and named in 2021 a Top Ten Business Journalist in the world and only Canadian. He also made the RETHINK’s global list as a Top Retail Expert 2024)