As a business owner you face many challenges as you start, grow, and then look to transition out of your business. To assist you in your journey, I have crafted a weekly series of short introductory articles, compiled several case studies that discuss various components of building a successful business, provided some best practice considerations for growing, and then prepared your business for a successful transition.
These weekly articles are designed to stimulate thinking about the process of getting yourself personally prepared and your business exit ready and exit attractive for that future buyer. Most owners get one chance to get it right and being ill-prepared should not be an option, yet most owners cannot sell the business they built (1 in 10 actually sells successfully) because they did not build an asset. If you must sell your business to fund your future lifestyle, ask yourself – do you want to be the one that does or one of the nine who could not?
In this article, I discuss goal planning as a business owner and why it is essential to create a business that is not only successful but which is also an asset with salable value. I also provide a best practice framework for goalsetting to help you create goals that are effective, and which can be achieved.
While every business has value, the question is whether it has salable value (value to a buyer) and not just to the business owner, as these are two very different perspectives. Having a disciplined process entrenched in the business for goal setting demonstrates a commitment to building a salable asset.
