Joan Young, President of Sunbelt of the Greater Bay Area, has been helping buyers and sellers since 1980. With franchising as Joan’s major focus at the time, it was a natural expansion to add business brokerage for her clients.
In 2000 Joan had the opportunity to start Sunbelt Business Brokerage in Santa Clara County. There were then 18 other Sunbelt offices in California. Since Joan had been working with and sharing office space with a leading Mergers and Acquisition company for nine years, she knew the industry well and liked the idea of having the association with a very strong business brokerage name. Sunbelt now has over 28 offices in California.
Since opening the first office in 2000, Sunbelt of the Greater Bay Area has grown with eight highly competent business brokers, a highly respected office manager/IT specialist, and a creative business development director. Young has offices in San Jose as well as Pleasanton. Additional territory was purchased, so now Sunbelt of the Greater Bay area services most of the Greater San Francisco Bay Area.
In the Beginning
SUNBELT began operations in 1978 in Charleston, SC. SUNBELT prospered as a single office operation until 1991 when Ed Pendarvis, SUNBELT's founder, formed a partnership with an individual to open an office in Greenville, SC. The partnership method was used to open additional offices in Charlotte, NC; Columbia, SC; and Spartanburg, SC. In each case, SUNBELT was the largest business brokerage firm in each market within a few months of opening.
The Birth of a Franchise
In May, 1993, the License Offering Circular was approved, and the existing offices, with the exception of Charleston, were converted to franchises. In November, 1993, the SUNBELT Business Brokers trademark was granted by the United States Patent and Trademark office, and franchising began in earnest.
Industry Recognition
Since becoming a franchised operation, SUNBELT has been consistently honored as the highest ranking business brokerage franchise in the United States in Entrepreneur Magazine's "Franchise 500" issues.
Where We Are Today
SUNBELT has grown at a dramatic pace, with hundreds of franchise offices around the world. During the past several years, our network of offices has spread through Canada and expanded into the UK, China, Scandinavia, the Middle East, Southeast Asia and Australia with many more openings to come. On February 1, 2006, SUNBELT was acquired (via the sale of its assets) by MMI Business Brokers, LLC (MMIBB). MMIBB is a wholly owned subsidiary of Merrymeeting Inc., a company that specializes in acquiring and developing franchise systems. MMIBB exclusively does business under the name of SUNBELT Business Advisors Network and is herein referred to as SUNBELT. SUNBELT focuses its operating activities on selling SUNBELT franchises and providing services to SUNBELT's franchisees. All brokerage and other services provided to business buyers and sellers are provided by independently owned and operated franchisees of SUNBELT.
SUNBELT is the world's largest network of business broker offices. The SUNBELT network has hundreds of offices worldwide.
Core Values reflect our organization's cultural values and govern our day-to-day decisions and behavior. We expect our employees and franchisees to adhere to these Core Values.
Integrity – We revere honesty and forthrightness. We adhere to the highest ethical standards, provide timely, accurate and complete financial reporting, encourage prompt disclosure of bad news and welcome disagreement.
Golden Rule – We respect others and treat them in the way that
we want to be treated.
Objectives – We clearly state and share our objectives with our
employees, franchisees, shareholders and others. We measure our
performance against these objectives and react to new information,
changes and opportunities by adjusting our business processes to achieve
and surpass our objectives.
Excellence – We are committed to continuously improving our performance in order to meet and exceed the expectations of our franchisees, customers and investors/owners. We reward our people for improving service quality and reducing costs.
Profit – Earning a profit rewards our investors/owners and enables us to attract necessary capital for further investment in our people and operating processes.