Henry Ford is accredited with saying “Before everything else, getting ready is the secret of success.”
Preferably, when you started or bought your business you had already thought about and planned your exit strategy! You had a plan in mind for how and when you were going to exit your business. That’s good planning. That’s the ideal scenario. However, it is also the most poorly addressed scenario!
After all, when you start or buy a business all you have in mind is making your millions running the business. Maybe you did make millions, but why not makes millions more when it comes time to exit the business?
“O.K.” you say, “So where do I start?”
PLAN AND PREPARE – and DO IT NOW!
You need to quickly decide on two things. Firstly how much do you want to sell for? What would you like to get for the business to be able to do what you want next in your life? Maybe retire or buy another business or spend a year or two cruising around the world. Whatever it is, write it down in your plan. Start a planning book or journal. You will be amazed how things start to happen for you.
Second thing to decide after how much is when? Quite often the answer to this is “As soon as possible!” Well, fine, but if you sell now will you get the ‘how much’ figure you came up with? If “Yes” then that’s great, just give me a call and we’ll sell your business for you.
However, in most cases the answer is “No!” In this case, you need to know what to do to improve the value of the business. I can help with that too, so don’t despair. In my case in 2006 we were able to improve the value of our business by 30% in 3 months and then sold it in two weeks. So, it could work for you too.
What is YOUR best exit strategy?
I offer a number of different ways to help business owners prepare their businesses ready for sale and sell it. Please click SERVICES to view what I offer.
