James gregg / Arizona Daily Star

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Seeking safe produceCheap cheese just a tasty memoryWant food-store bargain? Think spudsGarcia's Cleaners celebrates 100 yearsUtilities look to the sunInspectors cite almost no one in May food checksHit beef sales, use the freezerDrivers try everything to beat gas pricesPREVIEW: Tucsonans 'hypermiling' to save at the pumpMore 'bread' for bread as costs rise all around

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Expanding call center. New Hiring Bonus!

Carrie Allen, a principal and designated broker at Allen & Young Business Brokerage, was recently honored by the Arizona Business Brokers Association as the 2007 Business Broker of the Year.

But Allen, who has been in the field for about 10 years, didn't always have an eye toward people. She spent 28 years as a veterinarian for birds and small animals, running two animal clinics with her husband and working extensively with the Arizona-Sonora Desert Museum.

Here are excerpts from an interview last week at her office on North Tucson Boulevard.

A It isn't as far removed as you might think. The whole idea was that I like animals better than people. And that turned out to be false, as I discovered, because being a veterinarian, you not only have the patient, but there is always a client, an owner, associated. And so I discovered I was a people person. Not only an animal person but mainly a people person. And I liked the diagnostic part and the business part of veterinary medicine, more so than the surgery. Business brokerage is very much a people business, and it's all about problem-solving. So the transition was not that difficult.

A: The discretionary money available, it's gone down. So people are tightening their purse strings a little bit for fear of a downturn, a greater downturn in the economy. Because of that, we are starting to see some of our buyers hold out a little bit longer, be a little more cautious in going into this market and buying a business. Businesses that relate to construction, particularly anything to do with residential construction, their earnings have gone down. And lending to purchase these businesses has tightened up.

The first-quarter earnings for some of the businesses that we're looking at to put on the market, some have turned down. Some are better than ever. It just depends on the industry, it depends on the particular business.

A: They need to try and keep the earnings growing, which means maybe working a bit harder and being a little more clever and reducing some excess expenses. And going out and maybe doing some more marketing, maybe other segments that are ancillary to their business. Their books and records need to be meticulous. So if they are sloppy in their bookkeeping, they need to hire somebody to put that in order. Because a buyer when they're doing their due diligence is looking very closely at that business. And the cleaner the books and records, the easier it is to sell the business.

A: They need to understand how a price is arrived at. They have to understand that amount of money that is being shown as the profitability is enough to support them, pay any debt that they may incur in purchasing the business and give them a return on investment.