One constant of successful companies is a stable, motivated management team. This quality not only contributes to corporate success, it is also key to increasing the value of your business and your successful business exit.
Should you decide to sell your business to a third party, you’ll discover that potential buyers place significant value on the [...]

In today’s Merger and Acquisition marketplace, an all-cash buyer is as rare as a balanced federal budget. Those buyers who do arrive at the closing table with cash in hand may not be over-burdened with huge bagfuls.
Almost as uncommon as the all-cash buyer is the offer of a valuation multiple that approaches (much less matches) [...]

When time comes to tell your banker you’re planning to exit your business, or when you need money you may experience feelings ranging from mild anxiety to outright panic. Why? We’ve been conditioned to believe that bankers say “no” far more often than they say “yes.” That may or may not be true but bankers [...]

The necessity of having a trained and motivated management team in place before and after you leave the company cannot be overstated. In the eyes of a buyer, a business has little value if its owner’s departure means the new owner must reinvent the wheel. So it is with systems. Once you are gone, can [...]

Fictional owner, Peter Miller, had called his accountant to ask her to help him value his business with the idea of retiring in a few years. No stranger to Exit Planning, his accountant assembled all of Peter’s advisors and launched a complete Exit Planning process. She began, not with an examination of how a transfer [...]

“I haven’t decided what I ultimately want to do with my business, or when I want to exit, or how much money I’ll need, or whom to sell to, so how can I plan my exit? Besides, I don’t want to exit right now.” If you’ve said this, or thought it, you are not alone. [...]

Let’s review the four areas where business owners who want to both survive in today’s economic climate and emerge from it poised for growth (or sale) can focus their energies. As you may recall, those areas are:

Preserving and Protecting Value
Identifying Value and Cash Flow
Creating Revenue
Creating Value

Most owners are currently waist-deep in the first area: cutting [...]

If you contemplate transferring your business to an insider (employees, children or co-owner) and you want to get paid the value of your business, then, generally speaking, the value of your business cannot exceed four times the true cash flow of the business. We have defined true cash flow as the amount of pre-tax money [...]

The current recession has given all business owners, quite literally, pause: pause in growth, pause in hiring, pause to reconsider exactly where our companies are heading — or need to head — if we are to meet our owner-based goals.
I have discussed the many benefits of using the time afforded by today’s economic downturn to [...]

“You’ve got to be very careful if you don’t know where you’re going, because you might not get there.” — Yogi Berra
It is not always easy to interpret Yogi. In this case, perhaps he is advising you to figure out just where you are headed in your business. As you near the time when you [...]