You will never realize your real wealth by starting your business. In fact, your wealth won’t be made simply by growing your business either. You will achieve your real wealth only at exit. The bottom line is that your real wealth will be made from the profits of selling your business. Your best option is when you can sell to someone who will pay a premium for your business because they [the prospective buyer/acquirer] believes they can generate even more value from the business you’ve worked so hard to build.
The most successful entrepreneurs create exit strategy plans; plans that layout their roadmap to grow their business so they can exit [get out] for the maximum valuation (dollar amount value) within a specified time period.
You can too because when you build a business to exit (whether via an internal/external sale, IPO or an acquisition), you set very different strategies and goals from the outset than when you simply try to ‘grow’ a business.
You see, your short-term results and success, and your long-term results and success are NOT mutually exclusive. When you build your business with a strong foundation including a defined exit plan, you can maximize short-term revenues and profits, while building and aligning your company for that multi-million dollar exit on your terms.
Since 1999, we have been developing exit strategy plans for our clients. Importantly, many of these clients who executed these plans, have since realized their high dollar exit dreams, which they had not known they could achieve. They are fulfilling the precise lifestyle dream they had when they first launched their businesses.
Your real wealth isn’t in starting your business. It’s in how you exit. The first step in exiting on your terms and your timeline is planning. Here are a few areas where you can start planning at absolutely no cost. Planning covers a wide range of issues, decisions and changes. Planning doesn’t have to be expensive. But it takes concentrated time, effort, commitment and follow-through to see results. Here’s where you can get started now.
Strategic Planning – The Art of Direction and Decisions
Building wealth and exiting your business don’t start when you are closing in on the finish line. It’s proven that when you focus on selling your business two to five years before initiating the sales process, you will almost certainly realize a much larger return. Developing a systematic approach to growth with a focus on your long-term goals makes every decision along the way easier, even in the face of risk, incomplete information, or unexpected change.
Continuity/Succession Planning – The Art of the Changeover
A systematic approach to succession planning gives you control, choices and sufficient time to choose, train and transition management, of your business. Your job here is to maximize the value you receive when you sell or transfer your businesses. You need to identify an owner-centered approach to exit planning based on your goals, objectives and concerns.
Exit Planning – The Art of Monetizing Your Business
Exit planning for wealth is all about maximizing and preserving the transferable value of your business. It’s extremely important to integrate personal, financial and estate planning goals; and then coordinate them with the growth goals and opportunities of your business; to maximize profit and minimize tax liability on both sides. Your fiduciary objective is to transfer ownership and corporate value as profitably as possible.
Contingency Planning – The Art of Structuring Your Business for opportunities, possibilities and growth
CEOs in general never take time to develop contingency plans. They are building a prosperous business not planning for a crisis or its demise. Skipping this one element of their business minimizes the value they can expect a buyer to pay for the business. You must develop those contingency plans and build the foundation elements to maximize valuation and make the business buyer ready.
Transition Planning – The Art of Reinvention
When you stop and think about it, most entrepreneurs do not measure success in terms of the financial rewards, but rather by the freedom and potential legacy that these financial rewards confer. But entrepreneurs often postpone transition planning because they struggle with how they would use their new freedom and how they want to define their legacy. You need to learn to find new purpose, community, and structure for your time; and then how to master wealth management and its new challenges and responsibilities.
If you would like to realize your own multi-million dollar exit, then we should talk. We can work with you to strategically develop your business and execute a comprehensive exit strategy that allows you to achieve your real wealth and every goal you set.
Kerri Salls
Exit Strategist
