Think about this for a second – how will your life change, knowing you can sell your business when you want and for the price you desire? Do you think that certainty would affect your happiness, health and lifestyle? Here’s another thing to think about – if you have a plan in place for the transition of ownership of your business at the point of sale, how will that affect your employees? How will your family feel, knowing they will have a more secure financial future? What if you learn that the work of making your company saleable will actually produce better profits? They’re interesting questions, aren’t they? If maintaining control over your future is vital to you, then it seems logical that you will wish to take appropriate action for a desirable exit when, and if, the time arrives. However, according to numerous studies, you probably aren’t taking steps to ensure a smooth exit strategy. It’s not for lack of attention to the problem, though, because business advisors frequently push their clients to prepare for an ultimate exit. City governments quiz companies in their tax base about their plans, and the media’s attention to the growing perfect storm of effects that unprepared businesses will have on our economic health and wealth should convince boomers to burn the midnight oil. So, why do we have to convince you to get a move on? Having spent the last two decades helping owners grow and prepare for succession, transition of ownership and exit, we are keenly aware that owners don’t know that they need to know critical information that will help change the tide of inaction. The most powerful message we have is that there are immediate benefits to getting this preparation work underway. You don’t have to wait for the exit date before claiming more of your wealth! In the meantime, the work of preparing your company so that it is in saleable condition will make the business more profitable. Our philosophy guides our methodology in helping owners claim their wealth. The secret to our success is in the cracking of the code for owners regarding how their company makes and loses money. And, we don’t follow the usual breadcrumb trail. We see a business as an interdependent system much like an engine, greased by the free flow of information. Employees power the engine, but the trick to high performance and profitability is the timely and effortless flow of information and knowledge throughout the company. A company functions at high performance when the leader is the mechanic, not one of the cylinders. We are mechanics, too. Using another analogy, we’re similar to sports coaches. For instance, if players don’t work on their communication strategies to signal each other, or they don’t eat right, their mental game lacks sharpness. When players don’t get the right cues from each other, they react in conflict. Despite all of their skill and talent, the sport suffers because of the weaknesses of the areas that are ignored. Yet pointing to any one of those areas and indicating that one is the culprit over the other, doesn’t work either. It’s never one person or one aspect of the whole system that is the culprit. Nonetheless, we see managers and owners repeatedly search for lone culprits, as if benching one player will make all of the other ignored (or unknown) issues disappear. And the result is a lot of angry, disappointed and sad players (and fans!) with a frustrated coach. A great coach, like a great leader, owner or exit planning advisor pays attention to mental, emotional, physical, psychological, financial, and operational concerns, as well as the interplay and interconnection among these factors. The issues of not being saleable or profitable exist in pockets throughout the entire system. Once the system is tuned, then attention is spent noticing and fine-tuning the bumps, grinds and blocks to information flow, and educating the owner about how to become the mechanic of the company. Now, we have a high performance team ready to take on any challenge, be it the Indy 500 or attracting the exit deal of your dreams. ‘Team’ is the operative word for exit planning. For instance, we work with partnerships most often because partners talk to each other about their future. They are already a team, and they push each other to action in a way that single-owner companies don’t experience. This is also true for larger groups of shareholders. But, invariably, every partnership grinds noisily with a host of frustrations, conflicts and unmet expectations . . . and, that’s how these business teams often find us – a referral from a friend who listens to their frustrations. The partners often know it could be different. They want their conversations to be different, but they don’t know how to get past the unfinished business that has piled up over the years, and they don’t know what is confounding their best intentions. Unless the solo owners are talking about what’s getting in their way with a trusted source, they often don’t know there are solutions and they don’t realize they are creating many of their company’s mechanical problems. During our years of working with the Mergers and Acquisitions (M&A) and private sectors, we discovered that both groups struggle to understand each other, and they are frustrated when promising deals between a potential buyer and seller don’t culminate with a closed transaction at the end of a long, arduous process. We see the same, low-performance team challenges and grinding information exchange dilemmas with every project we accept. Because of our divergent backgrounds, as well as our many years of working with numerous types of varied businesses, we see and hear the same patterns repeatedly. Why companies are not profitable. Why partners and shareholders mistrust each other. Why deals don’t work out. Why companies stumble and shrink when they embark on growth strategies . . .
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