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A Sellable Business: The Goal of the smartest Business Owners

5 Reasons Why Building a Sellable Business should be your most important goal

Metro Business Advisors guide St. Louis business owners to their goals.
Metro Business Advisors guide St. Louis business owners to their goals.

What are your business goals for the year?

If you’re like most owners, you have a profit goal and maybe also a top line revenue number that’s important to you.

While those goals are important, there is another objective with an even bigger payoff: building a sellable business.

But what if you don’t want to sell your business?

Check out the following five reasons why building a sellable business should be your most important goal,

regardless of when you plan to move on to your ” Life Beyond Business.”™

 

1. Sellability means freedom

One of the fundamental tenants of sellability is how well your company would run without you if you were unable to work for a while.

If your business is dependent on you personally, there’s not much to sell.

Is your business owner-dependent? Making your company less dependent on you by building a management team and documenting just-add-water processes for employees to follow means you have the ability to spend time away from your business. Think of the world of possibilities if you could just choose not to go into the office tomorrow….

2. Sellable businesses are more fun

Running a business would be fun if you were able to spend your days on strategic thinking and big picture ideas. Instead, most business owners spend the majority of their day on the minutia: the government forms, the employee performance reviews, bank reconciliations, customer issues, auditing expenses…

The boring-but-necessary details of company ownership suck the enjoyment out of being the owner —and it is exactly these tasks you need to delegate to someone else’s job description if you’re ever going to move on and let’s face it, one way or another, that will happen.

3. Sellability is financial freedom

Each month you open your brokerage statement to see how your portfolio is doing, right? Not because you want to sell your portfolio, but because you want to know where you stand on the journey to financial freedom. Creating a business you can sell also allows you peace of mind, knowing that you’re building something that—just like your stock portfolio—has value you could choose to make liquid one day. Find out what your business is worth with an objective business valuation so you can be certain that will fund your Life Beyond Business.™

4. Sellability is a gift

Imagine that your first-born graduates from college and as a gift you give him your prized 1967 Shelby Ford Mustang. Your heavily indebted child takes it on the road, but after a few miles, the engine starts smoking. The mechanic takes one look under the hood and declares that the engine needs a rebuild.

You thought you were giving your child an incredible asset, but instead it’s an expensive liability he can’t afford to keep, nor can he sell the business without feeling guilty.

You may be planning to pass your business on to your kids or to let your young managers buy into your company over time. These are both admirable exit options, but if your business is too dependent on you, and hasn’t been tuned up to run without you, you may be passing along a jalopy that’s more of a burden than a prize.

5. Nine women can’t make a baby in one month

There are some things in life that take time, no matter how much you want to rush them. Making your business sellable often requires significant changes; and a prospective buyer will want to see how your business has performed for the three years after you made the changes required to make your business sellable.

Therefore,

If you want to sell a business in five years, you need to start making your business sellable now so the changes have time to gestate.

Make it your goal to identify and make the tweaks necessary to sell your business NOW, so your company is ready when you are.  

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