I recently spent a week in Chicago to earn a certification in business exit planning. I am now officially a Certified Exit Planning Advisor and I will share a lot more about this as time goes on. This month, I want to share a concept that exit strategy IS business strategy with the following points:
Author Archives: Whittaker
I frequently hear business owners and clients tell me that they have someone interested in buying or investing in their business. As they are telling me, there is often enthusiasm and excitement in their voices. Through our years of experience with clients on both the sell-side and the buy-side of transactions, I have learned that
Through our succession planning work with clients, we frequently have discussions about the ways to exit a business and the pros and cons of each. For privately held companies, there are generally eight ways to exit. Before I launch into the eight options, I want to highlight some recent survey data. In 2013, the Exit
It’s September, the kids are back in school and football is in full swing. We were getting ready for the opening weekend of football and watched the recently released movie Draft Day starring Kevin Costner and Jennifer Garner. I enjoy watching movies and relating them to business situations. Draft Day takes place in a span
After working for many years to grow your business, you may have reached the point where you’re thinking about selling. Maybe retirement is on the horizon and you’re counting on proceeds from the sale of your company to help support you. Eyes wide open Your business is possibly the most valuable transferrable asset you will
It’s never too early to start thinking about a succession plan. Whether retirement is years away or just around the corner, you want to protect the value of your business by ensuring that any leadership transfer will be smooth. Begin exploring the process by considering the following issues: Employee buy-in. A successful succession hinges on
When you climb behind the wheel of your car, you’ll see a row of gauges on the dashboard with needles that give advance warnings of potential problems with oil pressure, engine temperature and other measurements. Such gauges enable drivers to spot signs of potential danger at a glance and take corrective action. Like car owners,
According to the annual Business Reference Guide written by Tom West, 70-80 percent of businesses do not sell. One of the reasons this happens is because many business owners focus on current income generation as opposed to building the value of the enterprise. Profit or income does not automatically translate to enterprise value. Enterprise value
Over the last couple of months, we have been working with some of our clients to increase their profit and the value of their businesses. While the questions are simple, the mechanics to implement are not as simple. The three questions to increase the value of your business by 30% or more are: What can
Businesses fail for complicated reasons — from dysfunctional management to insufficient capital; too-rapid growth to an inability to respond to changing markets. Why businesses succeed, on the other hand, is often easily explained. Regardless of size and sector, most healthy companies share three characteristics: 1) strong revenues, 2) low production costs and 3) low operating