Planning...

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You know the old adage, first said by Benjamin Franklin, “If you fail to plan, you are planning to fail.”

You need a plan on how to successfully make your business valuable to others.

You know the old adage, first said by Benjamin Franklin, “If you fail to plan, you are planning to fail.”

You need a plan on how to successfully make your business valuable to others.

One business owner I know started a business with his best friend. It was servicing and repairing laser printers. Laser printers had just become hot on the scene. Did these two friends know how to repair a laser printer? Not a chance. But they learned.

Did they have the money to start a business in a thriving mid- west city? No. Did they have clients? Not really. All that knew is that there was a niche to fill. They were convinced that they could do this. They were determined to succeed. When we discussed their predicament, one of the business owners deadpanned, “We were delusionally optimistic.”

The two spent a decade running the business together. The one business owner bought out the best friend. “It was great until it wasn’t,” this owner related to me. He had been thinking about selling it, but he had never planned on anything. So, by the time he was ready, the business wasn’t ready. It didn’t sell for as much as he could have gotten a few years prior.

“If I had planned better, the business would have been more valuable,” he said. In fact, his operations manager called him the “enigma machine” because everything ran through that one business owner, and when he was gone, the business was gone.

Plan on how to make your business successful so a buyer believes, “Hey, this is a good deal.” It does not have to eat up a lot of your time. You invest time and money in your business because of the rewards. You can possibly sell the business for far more than you think. It takes planning, and it will take some of your valuable time. Is it worth it? You betcha.

Here are some things to think about:

ƒ Owner dependency. We’ve talked about it in this chapter, but it’s worth repeating. Can you, the owner, step aside, and can the business continue to run, or does it fall apart like a house of cards? One way to test this is

 
 

to take a vacation, the kind of vacation that is so far out of Internet range that you can’t call in, no matter how hard you try. Then after you come back, ask yourself: how did the business do? Did it falter? Were your profits down? Did problems come up that are waiting on your desk when you return because you are the only one who can solve them? If your business didn’t do well without you, then you can’t step away. You have a job.

  • ƒ  Buyers don’t want to be too dependent on a handful of customers, or worse.

  • ƒ  The buyer needs your secret sauce to successfully take over your business.

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