HATTIE: Number four. Sell to someone like you.

PETER: We ran a blind ad in The Wall Street Journal.

HATTIE (Voiceover): Peter Schenck sold his advertising agency to a colleague in his industry.

PETER: We ended up with 72 qualified people who were prepared to buy it--who said they were prepared to buy the business.

HATTIE: So did they send you a letter?

PETER: Yes, we asked for a letter about their basic background that would make them eligible to by the business.

HATTIE: How did you edit the list of 72?

PETER: We're members of a marvelous trade organization, national trade group, American Association of Advertising Agencies, which did a great job of counseling any number of agencies throughout the previous decade previous to ours. They have a lot of staff experience in this. And it just happened that their regional guy was visiting our offices at the time I had this stack of 72. And I said, `Would you do me a favor? Take an hour, go in, and, you know, and take a cup of coffee, go through these letters and tell me if you see anything that you believe are really home runs, people that you know in the industry who you feel have both the means, the inclination and the chemistry to be a match here.' So he did exactly that. He came out after an hour, there were four letters left on the desk. He said, `Any of these four.' Then we brought our CFO into it. And we had an accountant, our CFO, our attorney and the two owners and that was the five-person team that did the deal all the way through.