When You’re Too Busy Fighting Fires

You own a profitable and growing business that provides you many benefits; income, wealth, identity, challenge, satisfaction, and pride. By any measure you are a success. Congratulations.

Hold on just a minute. Despite all your successes, your business may be failing you in a very unexpected way.

Let’s consider an “owner” based definition of success - one that measures success not by how well the business operates and not by the day to day benefits it provides, but by the rewards you will receive when you are ready to leave it. After all, what you really want from your business is the ability to leave it under the most favorable conditions.

There are few universal truths in business life and this is one: You will leave your business. The only way you as an owner can do so successfully is to create an Exit Strategy as early as possible and stick to it.

I know, I know. You already plan. You plan day to day operations. You plot marketing strategies, create production schedules, devise sales efforts, and compile projections. You’re busy “fighting the fires” that all business owners face on a daily basis.

This is traditional business planning and is very different from the kind of planning you must do for yourself as a business owner. The importance of owner-based planning cannot be overstated and the objectives fall into three broad categories 

• Creating and maintaining business value
• Exchanging your ownership for money 
• Meeting personal and family needs

In future posts we’ll talk about each of these categories in more detail.

Tags: business exit strategy, business planning, business success, universal truths