As a business owner you must periodically ponder your business exit. You have an accountant, possibly several attorneys and other business advisors, but do you have a real strategy or plan? For most business owners, this is the largest and most important transaction of their life…. So, there is no time to mess around or mess-up.
I call it building your Bridge to Monetization™ – check it out!
A Bridge to Success
Like a physical bridge, Your Bridge to Monetization™ needs a well-thought-out design, a strong foundation and has multiple stakeholders that ensure a successful exit. In this case, your stakeholders are your management team, your employees, your advisors and possibly your partners if you have them.
It takes time, unwavering focus while running your business, hard work and a well-qualified team of experts with exit planning experience. All these components make for great success. However, to achieve true success, you will need a proven process that guides you and your stakeholders. Our process is simple but very effective; Build Value, Protect Value and Monetize Value!
But it isn’t just any process you’ll need to consider. Given the stakes and sensitivity of an exit, you’ll want a process that has been cautiously customized to the needs of your business. This not only increases your chances of a successful exit; it further increases the chances of a fruitful succession of an asset you worked hard to build over the years.Add media to your posts
The Key To Your Prosperous Exit
Building the value of your business is imperative and who better than you know how that is done.
But in my 30 plus years of experience working with business owners, I have witnessed business owners in “cruise-control” who mistakenly let crucial growth elements such as the process and procedure take the back seat. In the long run, this has caused them more damage than good.
So, to save you from a wide variety of mishaps, it’s wise to develop your unique exit planning process that will identify and address the many pitfalls that you will encounter. You can either buy, rent or build a process; however, they all need a facilitator to harness and manage the process based on your goals and philosophies.
An experienced business exit facilitator, someone who knows the ins and outs of how to drive the process, is not easy to come by. But it could be the key to success.
In a nutshell, a facilitator helps in analyzing your exit planning needs, is sensitive to the sometimes-competing personalities and emotions within the company and can deal with the many complex business challenges you will encounter.
Bearing in mind the various individuals involved in your process, the facilitator ensures that the stakeholders follow the process, which helps you Build Your Bridge to Monetization™.
The Process
Now, for the crucial part.
Our process is a 3-step system; Build Value, Protect Value, Monetize Value that incorporates many factors that are at play in an exit strategy. Some of these, despite their importance are typically overlooked. For this reason, you’ll need to have undivided attention for what I’m going to say next.
Step 1 – Building Value – Wherein we identify and maximize your value drivers, assimilate the importance of goodwill to your valuation and emphasize the clarity of your brand and your internal and external messaging. But first we need to benchmark value.
Step 2 – Protecting Value – Here we focus on locking-down and incentivizing your key team members, protecting against tax erosion pre and post-sale and identifying and addressing all risk management issues that could de-rail your business prior to an exit
Step 3 – Monetizing Value – At this point, we are ready to analyze and evaluate all of your internal/ external monetization strategies, including creating a family legacy. Building your Bridge to Monetization™ requires the determination to truly understand your monetization options, some which may not be easily visible to you.
For the process to be effective though, you’ll need to execute your strategy at least two or three years prior to your transaction.
At Clear Advice we have seen the 3-step process work wonders to help our clients. We help them develop and execute a business exit plan that has been perfectly tailored to build, protect and monetize their business value.
In addition, we serve to facilitate the process, coordinate the myriad of projects and tasks you will encounter. In a nutshell, we integrate the activities of the business owner’s team of advisors, creating one comprehensive strategy to ultimately exit the business in style.